Reversible Pants Sewing Tutorial

Read the first part of the series Basic Pants.

With fall coming up, it will be great to have these reversible pants on hand.

There're a lot of reasons I love these pants:

1. You can switch up sides to match two outfits.
2. With fall coming up, having two layers provide some warmth to the little tush.
3. With a baby like mine, who's allergic to all the artificial fabrics, this is the only way I can make her wear fancy stuff, like velour, with a cotton lining inside.
4. If you make it in contrasting colors and a little longer, you can have nice contrasting cuffs, which will later become plain pants, when your baby grown 2 inches overnight.

Do you need anymore reasons to try these out?
Lets get going then...

Supplies: Two fabrics. - half yard each for a 2 yo size
Elastic for waistband - 1 inch wide
A good rule of thumb for determining elastic length is to measure the waist of child and subtract 3 inches.
This works for me but if you can, just pin (use safety pin) a loop at a length that seems reasonable to you. and try putting this loop on child's waist. If it is comfortable and snug then that is the ideal length.

Lay the fabrics folded into four layers lengthwise, lay fabric 1 on top of fabric 2.

Place your pattern on fold on fabric, with straight side lining up with the fold.

Trace and cut. If you want contrasting cuffs at the hem, extend the legs by one inch.

Now sew the inseams of legs on all 4 pieces.

Join the two fabric1 legs together. Also Join the two fabric2 legs together. So you have 2 pants, which don't have waistband or hems done, yet.

Now join both pants at the hems. ( both legs right sides together)

Pull out both pants and now insert fabric 1 inside fabric 2, this time wrong sides together.

Now iron the fabric at the waistband, about half inch inside. Top-stitch this seam, leaving a 1.5 inch opening.

Sew another seam parallel to the top-stitch, about 1.5 inch below this one, leave no opening.

From the top seam opening, insert an elastic. Sew both the ends of elastic.

Sew the opening shut and done!

Sew Easy Tutorial: Reversible Zen Dress Pattern

You can read the story behind this series and the first part 10 min skirt sewing tutorial here. Here are the earlier tutorials - the second part 20 min dress from Tshirt, third part Butterfly Shrug Sewing Tutorial, fourth part Kaftan Sewing Tutorial for women and fifth edition Strawberry Vanilla Dress of the series.

This week lets make an A-line reversible dress. When I thought about doing this tutorial, I was surprised at why didn't this idea came to me earlier. This dress has very simple cutting, and very simple sewing and yet the finished garment looks something that would take a lot of effort. A perfect sew easy.
Not only is this easy to sew, its also very easy to put on the child and take off. And if she spills some sauce on one side just put it on from the other side. No wonder the first name that came to my mind was Zen Dress.

So lets get started.

Supplies:
Two coordinating fabrics half yard each
Two set of closures of some kind ( snaps, Velcro, buttons etc)

For measurement: An A line dress that fits the child.

Cutting:

Lets lay out the fabrics first ( lets call fabric 1 - F1, fabric 2 - F2 )

Fold F1 lengthwise in half.

Fold it again lengthwise in half.

Fold F2 similarly and place it over the F1. Also fold the dress in half lengthwise and place it on fold.

Mark the neck front.

Draw an outline around the dress with some margins at the side seams for seams. I have kept the margins more because I wanted the dress to be wider than the original.
When you reach shoulders just extend the neck and armhole such that it extends 2.5 to 3 inches above shoulders and then round it towards the end.

Cut across all the layers.

Pull out one layer of F1 and one layer of F2. This is the back of the dress.

To cut the front, draw a curve between the points that we had marked earlier, between the front neck and shoulder.
Also draw a line 1 inch above the shoulder as shown in the pic above.

Cut the deeper front neck and the line above the shoulder that we just marked. In the above pic the back pieces are on the left and the front pieces are on the right.

Now take both F1 pieces and place one on top of other right sides together. Similarly take both F2 pieces and place one on top of other right sides together. Make sure both pieces are aligned at the sides.

Sew the side seams. The seams are not visible in the above pic so I have marked the seams with a blue line. Its still a little hard to see though.

Turn F2 inside out.

Slide the whole dress inside F1 such that F1 and F2 right sides are together.

Now sew joining F1 and F2 starting at front of neckline

and continue on shoulder, armholes, back shoulders, neckline etc until you are back at the starting point. Go easy and take your time aligning F1 and F2. This is a very simple dress with just 4-5 seams total, but if you mess up the alignment of the two fabrics, you will be left with a wonky garment where one fabric will be doing a peek-a-boo on the other side.

Cut small notches throughout the seam you have just sewn. Don't forget to snip the corners of squares at the front shoulders. These notches make it easy to turn out curvy seams and help fabric lie smoothly. Just take care of not cutting into the seams while making these notches.

Turn the dress inside out. Use a pencil to turn out all the corners of the dress.

Iron the dress to smooth out any misalignment while turning. Also iron the hemline inside about half inch on both F1 and F2 as shown above. Make sure that the hemlines are exactly equal for F1 and F2 and iron them well so that they don't show on the other side.
Top-stitch the hemline with both F1 and F2 together.

I also recommend top-stitching the neckline ( which here means neckline, shoulder, armholes) though its not necessary.

Add closures on both shoulders. I have used snaps because I had the snap pliers and they take the least amount of time. But you can add velcro or buttons as well.