Styled here with a Jalie Laurent t-shirt, which I embroidered with this design.
Pattern Background
Classic straight leg jeans pattern for kids size 2-8. It can be made either as a pull-on pant or with a front fly.
Fit and Sizing
I made a size 3. My son measures closer to a 2 in width, but his height is a 3 right now. I figured since I was doing a pull-on style, using a non-stretch fabric, and want him to get some wear out of it that it was better to go bigger than smaller.
The only alteration I made was lengthening the legs 1/2″ to allow a little bit more room for growth. You can see when he’s sitting that they sit at a good height and don’t ride up too much.
Materials and Notions
The fabric I used was a 100% corduroy my mom gifted me from her stash, purchased many years ago.
Instead of self fabric I used pants pocket lining from Wawak for the pocket.
I didn’t use buttonhole elastic, instead I encased 1 1/4″ elastic inside the entire waistband.
I used Gutermann Mara 100 thread for all of the stitching.
Construction
I constructed these entirely on my Juki TL-2010Q, including the faux buttonhole (which was done with my Singer vintage buttonholer).
I did notice that certain pieces with this pattern (like the front fly piece) were cut the wrong side up if you were following a mens style pant with the fly facing the left instead of the right. Just something to think about when you’re cutting this out. I also noticed the pocket facing was 3/8″ too wide and needed to be trimmed at the side seam when sewing it to the pocket lining.
I chose to do a pull-on style. Just makes things easier for a newly potty trained three year old! When I sewed the two front pieces together at the center front I also enclosed the front fly piece inside, which acted as both a stabilizer and guide when topstitching the faux front fly detail.
Instead of the buttonhole elastic I chose to encase 1 1/4″ inside the entire waistband. It feels really secure. When I attached the waistband I did it Jalie 3243 style. After sewing the faux buttonhole in the front I pressed up the outer waistband, stitched the inside first (right side of the waistband to the wrong side of the pants), then flipped the outer waistband over and stitched it in place. While I stitched the outer waistband in place I carefully encased the elastic. (I tried doing a casing and then pulling the elastic through, but the stiff fabric was causing it to roll.) Before attaching the waistband I basted the belt loops in place to the upper edge of the pants so they ended up being sewn in place at the bottom while stitching the inner waistband in place. Once the outer part of the waistband was sewn in place I stitched the belt loops at the upper edge of the waistband. This helped keep the elastic tacked in place in a subtle way.
Conclusion
This is a great, versatile kids jeans pattern that can be remade over and over as they grow. The leg is a nice cut, neither slim nor wide, and you can easily customize the waist based on the child’s preference and/or developmental stage. He’s got enough pants for now but I will definitely will be making it again for him in the future!
French seam inside the hood. Hood edge is a double folded hem (my choice)Bundled away Inside of front pocketFront pocket
Pattern Background
The Ash anorak, available in kids sizes 2-8, is an unlined anorak with a snap front placket and zippered self storage pocket.
Size and Fit
My son is closer to a 2 in width (if not a bit smaller) but 3 in height. I made a 3. I feel like it’s a good fit, especially once I add layers when the weather starts to cool next month.
I made no alterations. Now that he’s out of diapers he doesn’t need the extra hip room.
Fabric and Notions
I used a 100% nylon gingham print raincoating from the outlet section of Gorgeous Fabrics. It was only $9.60 for a two yard piece. You need something lightweight and thin or else the self storage pocket won’t work.
I interfaced the welts for the front placket and front pocket using Heat N Bond fusible tricot interfacing from Wawak. I don’t particularly love this interfacing (the non-fusible side feels so plasticky to me) but it is good for lightweight, stable fabrics that just need a bit of reinforcement.
Snaps are from KAM.
The zipper is a #4.5 handbag zipper from Amazon. It is one of those that come on a roll that you cut to length and then add the zipper pull to.
Construction
Ever work on a project that just seemed to fight you every inch of the way? That was this project for me. I stayed up way too late both nights I worked on it because I refused to be defeated. Ironic, because I specifically chose this pattern over the Jalie Maxime jacket thinking the Style Arc Ash would be a quicker, easier sew. I had spent several hours last weekend fixing my 10 year old Rowena steam generator iron so my available sewing time was less than I had initially planned.
This fabric was awful to work with. Very difficult to mark (and finally the chalk I used ended up being hard to remove), very difficult to fuse anything to, horrible to press, and completely unforgiving when sewing. It reminded me of how I hate working with waterproof/water resistant fabrics. There’s some puckering around where the hood attaches to the body and after carefully unpicking and re-sewing some sections I decided to just let other imperfect sections go. After all, it is an anorak for a three year old, not a wedding dress.
As noted on the Style Arc website, this is an archive pattern so instructions are minimal. This wasn’t a huge issue for me, but I do recommend either printing out the instructions on a color printer or viewing the instructions directly on an electronic device. I printed this out on a black and white laser printer. Which is normally fine, except the illustrations for the zippered pocket in the front were nearly impossible to decipher correctly because the colors in the diagram for the zipper and the welt were so similar when printed out in grayscale.
After too much time spent both trying to transfer the markings, fuse the pocket welt, and get the zipper pull onto the zipper, I realized that I had messed up along the way. When faced with the prospect of unpicking and trying to redo this work I decided it was better to just chuck the front piece and recut the front and pocket welt and try again. (I had plenty of fabric to left over to recut.) Even so, the fabric was just irritating to work with and my welt is still far from perfect because I couldn’t get the nice fine marking lines I needed. (The key to good welt pockets is precision in both marking and sewing.) I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to get it right and in the end it still isn’t great.
I messed up again when doing the front neck placket. I didn’t sew the hood to the rest of the jacket when I was supposed to, instead realizing my mistake only after I had the front placket done and edges finished with serging and topstitched in place. I realized that the hood would look sloppy when attached to the body if I serged the seam like I did for the inner seams, so I made a self fabric binding, sewed it to the seam, and then topstitched it down. Similar to how you would do the neck binding of a hoodie. Even though it technically isn’t correct and adds some stiffness, I think it looks good and functions well enough.
Of course right after I added the last snap at the top I noticed I had not lined it up correctly when marking, so it’s a bit uneven when snapped. I was so over this project by the time I finished I just sighed and shrugged it off because it’s just a play jacket for a three year old.
I still have some confusion about the cuffs. Even if you turn back a double hem to make a casing for the cuff elastic, it is still far too wide for the 1/4” elastic noted in the supply list. It seems like it should be for 3/8” or even 1/2” elastic, depending on how you chose to sew the casing. (I would probably try 3/8” first because I edgestitched the upper edge of the casing to make things stay in place better when sewing the bottom of the casing.) Not sure if this is a mistake or if this is some sort of design choice but I’m thinking of redoing just this tiny section with wider elastic because I just know that elastic is going to roll and twist, plus the gathering doesn’t sit quite right.
I didn’t have a reversible zipper pull on hand, let alone one that would match my green zipper. So I used one of the normal handbag ones that came with the zipper coil. It makes zipping and unzipping the anorak into its pouch slower and more difficult, but not impossible. I added a self fabric zipper pull to help make it a bit easier. Instead of sewing right sides together then turning it out I folded it like binding and then edgestitched where the folded over edges meet. I should have done this for the pouch loop too, it’s much faster than turning that tiny piece out.
Conclusion
Even though my workmanship on this particular garment isn’t the best and I struggled more than I should have, I do think this is a valuable piece to have in my son’s wardrobe. It is loose fitting enough to wear over a sweatshirt in the fall and the fact that it folds into its own little pouch makes it easy to have on hand in my giant bag for sudden rainstorms. I really how the front pocket is fully functional for storage (he likes to pick up rocks and store them in his pockets when he plays outside) as well as for storing the actual anorak itself. Plus I think he’s really cute in it!
While I struggled more than I should have, I don’t feel there is something innately wrong with this pattern. It was more my inability to mark this fabric with the precision I needed, and the fabric just being rather inflexible and unforgiving.
