Little Girls Love Leggings Pattern & Tutorial

Leggings:  the staple of a  little girls wardrobe right? Use this pattern as your guide. Make them longer, make them shorter, make the legs wider, make them narrower. Add shirring around the ankle, make them wider and give them a lettuce edge. The possibilities are endless! Most of all have fun sewing!

I mentioned in my leggings post I needed to figure out how to make an ePattern and I think I’ve done it here:  stellalilys leggings pattern Since this is my first ePattern, please please please give me your feedback!!!  As I’m in Europe, my paper is A4 size and not the standard US size. If you have the option on your printer to select A4 size, please select it! Hopefully by lining up all the lines ( could be you need to overlap your paper a little) …it will work! I printed off a pattern yesterday just to double check and I came out with this.

This pattern fits both of my daughters who have a  21-22 inch waist. My 7 year old is long and skinny and my 5 year old is average size and build. You can easily adjust the length to fit.  Leaving them as they are will make them capri length on your average sized 7 year old. On my 5 year old they are ankle length. The above photo is my 7 year old and I lengthen the pattern as you’ll see below.

Let’s go!

First print off the pattern and lay it over your jersey or interlock fabric which should be doubled. You don’t need to cut on the fold, but you do need two identical  pieces of fabric. ( You did wash and dry your fabric, right????? You’ll be mad at me if they shrink! So, go wash your material and then come back here, deal?!) Don’t make the same mistake I once did by putting the stretch the wrong way on the leggings!! The grainline  should go top to bottom. ( waist to ankles ; so to say) and the stretch should go side to side.  Make sense??

Cut you your material . I decided to make these a little longer than the pattern so I left some fabric at the bottom.

It should look like this

Now you’ll need to pin them together, right sides facing each other. The yellow pins indicate the front, blue the back.

Please take this to your machine, either your serger or your regular machine and sew these pieces together . Sew from the waist to just where you see my bottom pin at that little point. If you are using your regular machine, please use a zig zag or stretch stitch. What I learned from my sewing with knits class is that jersey and interlock don’t unravel like cotton so you don’t need to finish off your edges!!

When done, it should look something like this

Now turn them the other way so the seams are  front and back and you should have something like this. Looking like leggings now, aren’t they??

Take the seams you’ve just sewn  and pin them together

The next step is to sew the  inseam. I find it easiest to sew from the bottom of one leg to the crotch and  all the way around to the bottom of the other leg.  If working with stripes like I am, try to line up your stripes, if  possible.

When you are finished, they should look something like these ( yes, these are other pants!) 

You have a few possibilities for the waist band. You can do the typical fold over to make a casing and work in the elastic, like I talked about in the skirt tutorial, but I thought I would try to do the waist band like on the store bought leggings. It appears that the elastic is not fed through, but sewn on. I cut the elastic at 22 inches, the size of my 7 year old’s waist, and sewed it together to make a circle. I then pinned it in place in just a few areas.

I used my serger to put it in, but you can use your regular machine as well using either a zig zag or stretch stitch. Be sure to evenly stretch your elastic while sewing it in and try not to stretch your fabric. First time I did this it was HORRIBLE but I learned from my mistakes!!

Here is it all sewn in from the inside.

And from the outside

Next step is to sew the elastic down. I used my regular machine and a long-ish straight stitch. I use a really really really old machine which has only straight and zig zag stitch and no double needle so  I sewed two parallel rows of straight stitch.Be sure to smooth out the top as you sew so its not all bunchy over the elastic.

The last thing  you need to do is hem your pants. I did another double row of straight stitches here and forgot to take a picture!! Oops! But I think you can figure that out.

P.S.

I just subscribed to Ottobre magazine and I was so excited when I got the 4/2011  issue in the mail yesterday and saw a leggings pattern in there. Guess what…mine looks almost identical! Phew, I think  I did it right?! Now if only that magazine had arrived a day earlier, I could have saved myself a lot of time by not having to draft my own pattern! But it was good experience for me, right?? And hopefully you’ll benefit as well with a free pattern!