Saturday Sewing: Upcycling/remaking a pair of adult yoga pants into horse riding pants for a 9 year old.

This little girl recently had her 9th birthday. On the birthday wish list was a pair of pants for horse riding. She is passionate about horses and will be going to a Horse riding camp this summer so it was time to kit her out.

I took a pair of adult yoga pants which I had previously made for myself and asked her to put them on. A bit comical as they were, of course, much too big for her. But I used my magic clips and a chalk pen to mark her size so that I’d know how much to cut off when I got back home to my Janome machines. I then cut the outer leg seam completely off (no need to unpick that serging!) and opened the leg fabric out flat.

I had some fairly thick knit fabric with a texture that I thought would work for the “patches” on the inseams. I tested out some stitches first to see what would look good to sew the patches to the black double knit fabric. I looked at a pair of store bought jodhpurs (see pic below) and in the end settled on an appliqué stitch ( blanket stitch) but I flipped it/mirror image with the straight stitch away from the edge of the patch and the “teeth” of the blanket stitch pointing outwards but stopping at the edge of the fabric. As the fabric was almost like faux suede, it won’t unravel so this stitch will work

The patch on the store bought pants.

I guess Nanna forgot to tell her to smile for this pic. Our little gymnast is showing what she will be wearing on a horse. Yes, she is also quite the little gymnast. I marvel at her suppleness and energy……that’s what nanna’s get to do.

And a close up.

We have one very pleased little girl who is looking forward to her Horse Riding camp.

The Janome Mc15000 (Acufeed flex foot) and Janome FA4 serger were used to sew these pants. The FA4 serger with its free arm was wonderful for attaching those cuffs at the skinny little ankles! Seams were serged with 4 thread overedge stitch on the serger. Wide elastic was attached at the waist with the elastic stitch on the sewing machine. Of course, any number of our Jnaome sewing machines and sergers would have worked for this type of project.