Papa pants

With summer break comes summer cleaning. When I start a big clean, I find it hard to stop until it's ALL done. Needless to say, there's been quite a bit of organizing, scrubbing and purging going on in the Kettle lately (I'm not really a shopper..where does all of this stuff come from anyway?!). 
This week, in the midst of filling bags to give away, I came upon a pile of shirts that Brian didn't use anymore. 
I was kind of sad to see these familiar and memory-laden shirts go, so I tried to think of ways to repurpose them into something else we could use. 
I'd been meaning to try my hand at sewing some pants for Levi and these old shirts ended up being perfect for this project. The amount of fabric I was able to glean from a Brian-sized shirt was exactly what I needed for Levi-sized pants (and I was even able to use the bottom hem of the shirt for the bottoms of the pants - so no need to hem!). 

Using one of Levi's nicest fitting pairs of pants as a pattern (with the help of this simple tutorial), I was able to finish 3 pairs of pants in one afternoon (almost 4, but one pair ended up being a bit too small). 
Sewing pants always sounded way too hard for a novice seamstress like myself, but these were surprisingly simple.  Most of Levi's store bought pants are either too large around the waist or too short for my tall and skinny boy, so it's nice to have some light, perfectly fitted, comfy "Papa pants" for Levi to play in all summer long. 


Oh yeah and three pairs of paints for $0 is pretty cool too..

(and yes, I realize that the white pair will probably stay white for about 5 minutes. :) Those might have to be pajama pants..)