I’ve had some LuluRoe leggings in my closet that I purchased, but rarely wear. I bought them when I was trying to “get out of my comfort zone,” but I’m honestly not in my comfort zone wearing leggings in public and definitely not these colorful ones. I’ve been wanting to try to transform them into something for some time, but never had the guts. Then yesterday, I watched several youtube videos (not in English) of someone making a quick transformation. They did no-sew…in fact, they used a glue gun. This leads me to believe this transformation isn’t meant to last very long at all.
So, I took some of main concept: cut the neck around from the crotch area and then how to measure to figure out arm placement. This was a little tricky because most of the videos I watched were not tank tops, but some version that didn’t have the sleeve straps that tanks have. I figured I could lay down one of my tanks for the general idea. That worked somewhat.
I did not have enough of the colorful LLR legging, so I cut into one of my favorite pair of jeggings. what???!! Well, it was getting holes and I need to replace anyway. I was hoping I’d have enough fabric between the two, but alas no. I need to actually lose some of my waistline (I’m trying…just not seeing yet, but that is neither here nor there.) So, I put it aside to work again today. I decided to just go ahead and see how come of my cotton fabric would work. I was a little worried because it wasn’t stretchy, but since there is enough stretch from the leg/jeggings, I was good.
I had to figure out several things: how to bring in some of the upper black fabric (I cut a 3" line about halfway in the middle, then sewed it on #2 on my machine. That seemed to work.) Then I traced one of my tanks for a better arm hole because my underarm area was huge, and even though I was conservative on my cut, it was too much, so I had to adjust, plus I had to bring in some gap around the arm straps. Once I figured it out; I made some small pleats, I tried to just sew the edges of the straps, but it looked weird. I didn’t have enough of the jeggings to cover the sides, so I thought about the black fabric. I was worried again because it isn’t stretchy, but it worked. Instead of folding both sides over like bias tape, I just stitched around again to tack down the stretchy fabric. Then, I used the black fabric as bias for the neckline and it worked ok.
(I know this all probably seems slightly confusing without pictures–I started to take some as I went, but when I started to worry it wasn’t going to work out, I stopped.)
Anyway, here it is! My legging to tank top transformation!
What I found:
I like how the jeggings separate the pattern and saved me from attempting to pattern match!
It fits!
I ended up making the underarm slightly too close for my liking.
I wish I didn’t need to use the black.
All in all, I am proud of myself for figuring out this project and making something wearable and that looks ok. Even though I’d never buy something like this from a store.
(See our cute tiny container garden behind me? We have 6 cherry tomatos, some herbs, and then flowers.)
