Boys' Dress Pants

February is Celebrate the Boy month over at MADE and Made by Rae! And I have a little surprise... You just might see me hanging around at MADE in a few days... Something involving a little tutorial I'm doing. In the meantime I thought I'd blog this pair of pants I made last month. They fit with the Boy theme, don't you think?



I call this kid Monkey, but I think he might be part giraffe. Monkey One recently went through another growth spurt. I had been meaning to sew him a new pair of dress pants for quite some time, as the hem of his old pants was creeping higher and higher up his ankles. I was making him wear his cowboy boots to church every week to hide the problem. One Saturday night I decided I couldn't take him to church one more time in those high-water pants. So at 9:45pm I dug into my fabric stash and started cutting. A few hours later I had these.



To keep things simple I left off the pockets. For the waistband I wanted a smooth front and an elastic back. But, as I always do, I started to complicate things: "Oh, it won't be too hard to add some pleats in the front" "I should just stitch around the front here to make it look like it has a fly" "I'll add this button on real quick just for looks" and so on. But in the end I was glad I added those complications and left off the pockets. The waistband took me longer than I thought it would. One of these days I'll keep that in mind while I'm budgeting my time.



As a pattern I used an old pair of dress pants I had made him for a wedding almost two years ago. Was it really that long ago? I can't remember what pants I used as a pattern for those. Since Monkey One only grows up and not out I kept the width almost the same, but made them six inches longer. Yes, you read that right. Six inches. (Please note that he has had other dress pants since that wedding. One pair he'd already outgrown. Another pair had been ruined in an incident with his female cousin involving pink nail polish, but he would have outgrown those, regardless. His other pair, which were almost too casual to wear to church in the first place--and were also seemingly shrinking--were in the laundry.)



The pants are just a tad too long. Can you see him stepping on the hem as he knocks on the door? But don't worry. I won't be surprised if he grows more and I have to let the hem down by July!