Wild and Free running.

As you may remember from previous posts, I recycled all my daughter's jeans into shorts for the summer to get extra wear from them as they would never be big enough for her next year. So we had to buy more jeans... which is something we did not find very easy at all. Everywhere we looked only had skinny fit jeans... these maybe in fashion but for my 2 year old, they are not something she wants to wear as she finds them far too restrictive, and there really should be much more choice for the active toddler.

So we were faced with a challenge to find her some looser fitting jeans that she liked and she could move freely in! As we are fond of recycling things, I had a quick rummage through the bags of clothing that I had put aside as it was no longer a good fit and found some of my sons old jeans. He is a little older than my daughter, so I decided to merge a pair of his with a pair of her old ones.

This is the first step we have added the pink scarf belt from my daughters old jeans to my sons old pair. My daughter loved this belt and she loves pretty embroidery on jeans too so this leads to my next step.

We cut the embroidered flower motive from her old jeans and stitched it to the new jeans with contrasting cotton. This however could be done much easier with special stuff for iron on patches.

These then are the finished jeans... very simple, strong, loose fitting and with a little touch of the things my daughter loves... We call them 'Big Brother Jeans' and best of all they were free, just took a little time, a few adjustments and she loves them... perfect for garden play.

Here they are on, 'what do you think?' perfect jeans for a little girl who loves to run wild and free through fields and explore the woods and climb trees with no restrictions.

Plenty of room for cartwheels and other tumbles.

Dancing too!

Crawling  and rolling in the dirt!

and even sliding down steps. My daughter is a very 'spirited young lady' and being able to move her legs freely and to have the most fun is very high up on her list of priorities.

To have a CHOICE of different styles of jeans would be lovely but just to let you know we will NOT buy clothing just because it was the only thing available! We are also saving more of my sons old jeans to try and decorate them with fabric paints in the future, another fun project.

I have recently been given lots of patterns on free cycle, some modern and some vintage and we will be trying to make some of our own clothing by adapting these. There are also many patterns and tutorials available on line to try.

Just to let you know after our third trip into the city and after visiting lots and lots of shops we did find a pair of looser fit jeans that she liked. What a challenge!