recycled pants

Anyone with small children will tell you that preschoolers go through pants at lightning speed.  I was lamenting to my mom a few weeks  ago that Spencer was down to three pairs of pants without holes in the knees when he came around the corner with a whopper in one of his last remaining pairs!  While we are extremely fortunate to be part of a wonderful cycle of hand-me-downs, there comes a point where all you get is shirts, everyone has already worn their pants through!  So I have finally developed a strategy to get a little more use out of what we’ve got:  Sort the damaged pants by color, and patch the knees!

The boy goes though pants faster than he does tissues!

You will need

2 pairs of rough looking pants (free, hand-me-downs)

Matching thread (free, left over from previous projects)

Cut the bottoms of one pair off.  Snip the back of the bottom off and iron flat.  Iron all the sides over so it looks neat around the edges.  You now have two pieces that will roughly follow the legs of the other pair of pants.  Pin them into place on the other pair and sew down your patches.  Now you have a pair of pants and a pair of cut offs! 

Chop one pair and use the back side, the fabric isn't as worn on the back.

Make sure you iron them so the outside of the pant faces out when sewn so the color matches.

I just eyeballed the placement.

From this distance you can barely tell they're patched!

Try It

Free.

Buy It

New pants cost around $12 at Target or Kohl’s

Verdict

Try It!  I was hoping to hem up the second pair into shorts, but the holes were above the cargo pockets.  They’re not perfect, but the whole project took my half an hour, cost me nothing, and brings our grand total of pants without holes in the knees to 4 (I bought a pair last week in desperation).