Contrast-Cuff Lounge Pants in Fanfare Flannel

In addition to the Quick Release Scarf, I made a tiny little pair of lounge pants for the littlest member of our family!  I used the same elephants as the scarf, plus some of the delicious pennants in a coordinating color (thanks, Cloud9!).  She looooves them, and insisted on going all Super Model on me when I took these photos. I can hardly even talk about how easy it is to sew with this flannel.  It clings to itself in just the right way, so I didn’t use a single pin in making these pants.  I swear, they went together so quickly and so simply that it literally took me longer to thread my serger than it took to make this entire pair of pants–including the contrast cuff. Of course, maybe if I’d slowed down juuuust a little, I would have avoided my one glaring mistake.  Anyone want to be the first to point it out? Um, yeah.  EVERY SINGLE ONE of those sweet little elephants is UPSIDE DOWN.  Oy.  That’s what happens when you get your sew-jo moving and start a project at 10 pm.  You don’t notice the..ahem…tiny details.  Luckily, my child likes that they’re facing the wrong way–as she said, “Mommy, look, they’re smiling at me!”  Thank heaven for the forgiveness of children.  We should all be so gracious and kind. I used a Simplicity pattern for these, which included the pattern for the contrast cuff.  I very nearly made the size 4 for this 3+ year old, and then remembered (even in my late-night haze) that for whatever ridiculous reason, Big 4 patterns for children are ludicrously oversized in almost all circumstances.  This child is dead 50% percentile for height and weight, and these pants are pretty big on her.  I already pre-washed my flannel, so it isn’t going to shrink much (see more about shrinking flannel in Kathy’s recent post on the Pink Chalk blog).

Luckily, I could easily shorten the waistband elastic to fit her better, and because the cuffs here are folded double–they’re cut as a rectangle that’s the width of the full pants leg (front and back) and the double the height of the finished cuff, so they’re sewing to the pants leg, the opposite edge is pressed over, and then they’re folded in half and topstitched in place, all of which means there’s no wrong side to the cuffs–it’s pretty easy to fold them up this year and leave them long next year.  My children have all been such skinnies that we get way more than a single year’s worth of use out of pants, so long as we can keep them out of the mud! The waistband has a sweet little mock tie from some scrap ribbon I found in a drawer, sewn on using a similar method to the one Dana uses here.  The waist casing itself is double folded and threaded with 3/4″ knit elastic. Up close, the flannel is every lick as soft as it is in real life, where it is amazing to the touch.  Am I going on and on about how soft it is?  Because I am a sucker for flannel anyway, so I just keep looking for more ways to incorporate it into my life.  I’ve already got flannel relaxing eye masks and flannel boudoir drawer scent sachets, and flannel jammies and flannel sheets.  Now I need a whole flannel wardrobe for myself! I mean, for real.  Could you not wear something this comfy ALL DAY?  My toes would curl, too, kiddo. Plus, they’re made by unicorns!!  (Labels from here.) I used my standard elastic waist treatment (like in this tutorial), where I stitch the casing at the lower edge, then edge stitch very close to the upper waistline edge.  Once the elastic is inserted, I also sew up and down IN the side seam on both sides to prevent the elastic from rolling inside the casing.  Because dude, doesn’t that drive you NUTS? See what I’m saying about the length?  We’re totally getting another year out of these bad boys. She seems pretty jazzed about it, too.  Thanks again to Rae for sharing this sweetness with me!  These flannels are legit, y’all.  No lie.

See more projects using this fabric throughout the blog parade over on Rae’s blog!