Sewing Tips: Making Kids' Pants Last Longer

I just bought these pants!

If your children grow lightening fast like mine do, you probably buy a lot of pants. I've come up with a few tricks to make those pants last longer which saves money at the same time.

Start by buying pants that are too long for your child with straight legs (tapered or flared will not work). Make sure they have an adjustable waistband (best...invention...EVER).

Adjust the waist so that it fits well, then mark where you need to hem the pants. You can use a variety of methods to hem, but you do NOT want to cut off any of the length--we will use it later. Two methods for hemming pants, jeans in particular:

Simple Double Rolled Hem

Hemming Jeans while keeping the original Hem (the method I used here)

Since there was so much excess tucked inside the pant leg after hemming, I hand-sewed an extra seam to keep the fabric tacked down. It would be quite easy for toes to catch it and pull all that hidden length out the bottom of the pant leg.

When the pants get too short, remove your stitches. You will want to wash the pants after removing seams as this will make the stitch holes disappear.

When the pants get too short again, provided the adjustable waist is still fitting well, you can add a fun cuff to add even more length. Plus, you get a "new" look from the same pair of pants.

A simple tutorial for adding a cuff to pants can be found here.

As long as the waistline doesn't change dramatically, you can quite possibly make this single pair of pants last through 4-6" worth of growth spurts! Think of it as a three-for-one deal!