Nesting: Embellished Leggings

As I mentioned before, I’ve been sewing a nice big stack of leggings.

I kind of went nuts and made a few for each stage from newborn through 9 months. This is only half of them too. They just don’t all coordinate and look as pretty together so I didn’t picture them.  :)

I mostly like to keep leggings plain. They go under things for the most part anyway.

But it’s nice to have a few touches here and there on some of them. Especially the plain Jane gray ones…

Ruffles and lace are very cute, but I wanted to come up with some ideas that are a little…different.

So, today I’m going to share a list of quick, simple ideas of how to fancy up your leggings that might be a little outside the box.

First, if you need good legging tutorials…

*This one from MADE uses four pieces and is the one I used for most of my leggings.

*I also really like this one from Make It and Love It and used it particularly for one of the projects as you’ll see in a minute. It only takes two pieces and is really simple to put together.

And… I have a confession to make. I bought some leggings from Walmart, made patterns from them and returned them. I am so cheap. I know it. I didn’t really like the colors they had at the time anyway, otherwise I would have kept them. Promise. :)

It was a trick to find leggings in the newborn sizes too. They look a bit wider and stouter than I thought they would. I’m just hoping I picked good leggings to pattern mine after!

Okay…let’s get on with it.

The first one I love love.

They are pin-tucked leggings.

When you get to this stage of your legging making…

before you hem the bottoms and add the elastic;

Draw out a line in invisible ink up the backs of the leggings.

Fold it over at the line and sew a straight stitch close to the edge. Make sure you lengthen your stitch length to at least 3.5.

You can use a stretch zig-zag stitch but it won’t look as nice. It will make the legging slightly less stretchy with this detail, but if you serge or zig-zag the rest of the seams it shouldn’t be too big of a deal.

It’s just a nice little pop of detail to the back of these newborn leggings.

The next one is to just add buttons. 

I used this tutorial from Ruffles and Stuff to add them.

You can also add a faux placket beforehand. I didn’t, but I think it would make it look even nicer.
These are 6-9 month size leggings.

The third project is to add some fleece flowers.

I chose fleece because it doesn’t fray or curl and it washes well.

I used Make It and Love It’s legging tutorial so I wouldn’t have to fuss with a side-seam when applying the flowers.

I just free-hand cut some flowers.

Pinned them on.

Then I put my feed dogs down and zig-zag stitched the flowers on. Because the feed dogs were down, the needle just went back and forth until I got a good knot. I added two almost perpendicular knots to each flower. I tried for a criss-cross but didn’t quite get one every time. :)

Clip all your threads.

Then finish assembling your leggings.  {These are 0-3 months.}

They will look cute under this yellow skirt I think. :)

The last one is an idea I added last minute…freezer paper stenciled leggings.

Walmart had a bunch of leggings on clearance for $1 {their 18 mo. to 5T sizes}.

I took this 18 month pair and added some freezer paper stenciled hearts. For a great tutorial on freezer paper stenciling see I Am Momma Hear Me Roar.

I just used a heart paper punch on the freezer paper and scattered them up one leg before ironing and painting.

I am feeling a bit burned out on leggings by now, but I think it would be fun to do more freezer paper stenciling on leggings later.