Mens T-shirt into Boys PJ Shorts

I am a little obsessed, yes I said obsessed, with repurposing.  Especially when it comes to stuff for Grant.  Little ones are so expensive and they grow out of clothes so quickly (or maybe my child is the only one who went through a size a month for the first 6 months of his life) that I can't bring myself to constantly be buying new clothes for him.  I am an avid yard saler, mainly just for baby clothes, and try to buy the sizes he will need in between yard sale seasons (October-May). 

However when there are things I haven't come across yet and he still needs them I try to find a way to reuse and make them from items we already have.  The main items being pajamas and shorts.  I have a garbage bag full of my husband's old shirts and decided I could make some pajama shorts out of a few of those.  In case no one else has thought of his I decided to make a little tutorial.  Hopefully it will make sense, but it's super easy and you should be able to figure it out (if I can do it a monkey could do it).

First, find a pair of shorts that fit your little one now and fold them.

Lay your adult size t-shirt out making sure the seems are in the right place (on either side, sometimes with a worn out shirt they can be off a little) and the fabric is smooth.

(the t-shirt I used in the above picture did not have any seams on the sides.  In this case fold your shirt in half matching up the right and left sides of the shirt and smooth out your fabric).

Lay the pair of shorts you wan to use as a pattern with the straight side flush against the seam and the bottom of the shorts flush against the bottom seam of the shirt.  By using the bottom seam that's already finished you will save yourself time and energy by not having to hem the bottom of the shorts.

Cut around the shorts about a 1/2 inch from the shorts themselves.  When you get to the point and are cutting up toward the waist be sure to curve out with your cutting.  This is so you will have enough extra fabric for the waistband.

Take your 2 pieces and lay them flat with right sides together.  Pin the right and left sides from the waist (the top of your fabric) to the end of the curve.  You can see in the picture below the little pink dots are my pins.

After you pin the fabric together stitch along your line of pins with a 1/2 inch seam allowance.

Now bring your seems together still keeping right sides together.  These 2 seams will be your front and back center seams.  You can see in the picture below they are starting to look like actual shorts.  You will need to spread the 2 legs of the shorts apart and pin them each matching the front to the back.

Make one continuous seam starting at one end, sewing to the center seam, then sewing down the other leg.

Since I utilized the bottom hem of the t-shirt there's no need to hem the leg bottoms.  Now all that's left is the casing for the waist.  The size of the casing depends on how wide the elastic is.  I like to use 3/4inch for shorts so I make a casing of about 1 1/4inch to be on the safe side.  Thread your elastic through your casing, stitch closed the opening and you're done.

I ran out of elastic to finish the shorts from the shirt I've been photographing for the tutorial but the above shorts were made the same way.  This is a great way to use up your husbands old t-shirts.