KCW # 1: from sweater to shirt and leggings

Yeah, KCW has started again! The excuse to sew every day for a whole week. This seasons theme is upcycle. I have upcycled several pieces already, so for a moment I feared I would not have enough inspirational "upcyclable" pieces to work with. My fear was misguided, I looked around the house and when I combined my search bounty from three different locations, I had enough inspiration to last me at least a month.

In the aftermath of the previous KCW I wrote, I was planning to have all the garment pieces cut and very well planned out for this season. Well I really wanted to do that, but nothing is pre-cut, I only glued the knight hoodie pattern I want to use this week. I am planning a special knight hoodie this week, but when push came to shove yesterday evening I decided to start the week of with a quick, one evening sewing project.

I took one of my too short sweaters and a pregnancy belly band and turned them into toddler leggings and a baby shirt. This is the third heavy knit sweater that I upcycle, and I still love to do it. It is so nice to work with this type of cotton fabric (a lock is a necessity in this case), I still haven't found such fabric in the store, the heavy knit that I did found had a high percentage of polyester in them.

I totally winged the pattern pieces. The sweater knit is extremely stretchy and although it recovers with wash it will always be a  bit sacky when worn, therefore the fit did not have to be perfect. The leggings were cut from the sleeves of the sweater without opening the sleeves, following a similar procedure as this tutorial. I used an already cut free leggings pattern (for the waist part)and earlier used onesie pattern pieces to draft the pieces. I used the belly band for cuffs of the sweater and the waist band of the leggings. I did not use elastic in the waist band of the leggings, the jersey is strong enough. The fit turned out fine, although the head opening on the shirt is a bit tight, I might have to address that next week.

My models were asleep yesterday when I finished, so this morning I took some quick pictures. My models were not totally in the mood, one of my pictures (only rejected due to terrible lighting of course) had them both plain crying! Fortunately after a few minutes they showed me their professional side and gave me something to work with. But still, my middle daughter was refusing to show of her butt so I have no picture of the perfectly lined up stripes.

I love to hear what you think of my creations. Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).