update old sweat pants with a slimmer fit

My boys love sweat pants. Big, baggy, comfy sweats that have been passed down from one boy to the next–they don’t care how they look, they just love them. Me, not so much. I hate how boys’ sweat pants are so huge, and I especially don’t dig the gathered ankles that always seem to get yanked up and stuck above the kids’ socks. Ew. I’ve seen some cute slim versions in stores, but I have a hard time paying twenty bucks for cute sweats when I can get the Hanes ones for five dollars, even if they are kind of ugly. So I decided to see how hard it would be to update a pair of “classic” sweats into a slimmer, more current look. Luckily, it’s not hard at all.

Here’s how to update a pair of boys’ sweats. I started with this pair of classic baggy sweatpants, found at Walmart for $5 (although in the spring you can sometimes find them on clearance for as low as $1!)

Turn those bad boys inside out, and start pinning new side seams and inside seams as you see in the photo below, start below the pockets and tapering in, then going for a slim straight leg. You can use a pair of slim pants as a reference if you’d like. While you’re at it, cut off the elastic at the ankles.

Here’s another view of the same thing, just shown with the pants folded:

Sew up your new seams and try the pants on. Take them in further or let them out as desired before trimming away the extra fabric.

That was the only adjustment I’d been planning to make, but when I tried them on they were still really baggy in the front…er…center front area. So I took a little out of the center front seam as well.

Finally, I didn’t love the look of the triple stitched elastic on the waistband, so I just flipped it down inside and sewed along the bottom, stretching out the elastic as I did so. I used a double needle to be sure the waist would still stretch (you could use a zigzag instead). This was purely for looks, so feel free to skip this step if you want (although since this entire tutorial is purely for looks maybe you don’t want to skip it after all 🙂

As a final step I turned up the bottom of each pant leg and hemmed, again using a double needle since that gives the most professional look. (Double needles are EASY to use! Just google it.)

Much better!