Sugar Bee Crafts

Simple Crafts and DIY ideas and tutorials

Skeleton spiders decor idea 2
Halloween free printable
Felt bows halloween
Wendys frosty coupon
Spider ring cards
Halloween+matching+girl+and+doll+dress+outfits
Home » Kid's Crafts » Leggings With Flare

Leggings With Flare

By

Sharing is caring!

I had a couple of followers email me because they found some really cute leggings and wondered if I could show how to make them.  I whipped up the leggings and wanted to make a matching hairbow, but didn’t have enough scrap ribbon, so I just gathered what scrap I had and hand-tacked it on a shirt instead.  My daughter loves it all and wore this outfit for two days straight.  The skirt my daughter is wearing is too big and so it’s not really doing justice to these super cute leggings!
You will not believe how easy these are to make – let’s get started:
Ribbon on leggings

Adding Ribbon to Leggings

You’ll need:
-footless tights (that are slightly too short)
-ribbon in desired color/pattern
-sewing machine, etc
First, gather your supplies.  I was aiming to have the leggings hit mid-calf.  I happened to have some footless tights in my giveaway pile because they were too small for my daughter – perfect.  Too small just meant too short – they’ll still fit around the waist.  If you need to go buy footless tights, buy a size too small so they’ll be short.  And then I had some leftover ribbon – that’s where you can be creative – try some wild colors!
As I was considering how to make these, I figured you’d gather the ribbon, then sew it on to the tights – pretty simple.  But it’s even easier than that!  I was thinking about my earlier use of my gathering foot and how it works, and thought of a new plan:
When you put the tights around the arm of the sewing machine, they are pulled taunt.  So when you sew the ribbon on top, they’re feeding through at different rates – same concept behind the genius of the gathering foot, and you don’t need any special foot.  So just sew on the ribbon, making sure that the tights are pulled tight.  When you take them off the arm of the machine, you’ll see that it ruffles up all on it’s own.
Since I wasn’t sure how much ribbon it would take to go around the bottom of the tights, I waited to cut the length until it was sewed down, so it didn’t have a finished edge.  I just overlapped a little, then folded the end over and sewed it down, as shown:

Leggings with Flare

Seriously, that was it!!  Sew a ribbon on the bottom of footless tights, and voila, Leggings With Flare!  Some more pics of my daughter – she would not stand still!  And really these look so much cuter in person!
Are you digging through your discarded tights stash right now? 😉

Simple Sewing Projects

if you love this super simple sewing project, you might also like:

About Mandy Beyeler

Mandy is a craft blogger who loves to blog and enjoys all things crafty, sewing, and DIY - she feels that if she can do something, you can too, and provides tutorials to help you along the way. She loves being a mom to 4 awesome kiddos and blogs from the Kansas City Area.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Karen says

    found you on new friend friday at the girl creative. those are super cute!

    sometimes i wish i had kids so that i could dress them in things like this! someday, someday. 🙂

  6. Gay Vaughan says

    I am SO making these…I don’t care that my girls are 20 and 14…I will give them to a friend! Thank you so much for bringing your hodgepodge to the party! I love seeing what you are up to…and hope you will join again!
    ~Gay~
    itsahodgepodgelife.blogspot.com

  8. Sheila Irish says

    I just found your wonderful Blog via U create and am in love with how very easy you make your absolutely adorable “leggings with flare”….Thank you for sharing your tutorial!

  14. kirstin & jordan says

    LOVE these… I don’t have any daughters, but my sister thinks that leggings are an absolute go-to essential for her girls. I’ll have to look for some for my nieces and add some goodness to them.
    we have a friday fun finds party- if you’re interested, we’d love it if you’d link up. 🙂

  21. Anonymous says

    Thank you sooooooo much. My sis sent me some leggings to do this for my niece’s birthday and I was just trying to figure it out. You made it so simple! 🙂

  24. Anonymous says

    Thank you!! I bought a pair of these for my daughter at a local boutique and spent over $20. on them and she tore a hole in them the 2nd time she wore them. I bought a pair of leggins at the department store for under $5. and have been wanting to add ribbon, I just wasn’t sure how. I am off to my sewing room to finally do this project. Thank you again for such a cute and easy project.

  25. Rebecca says

    You are a GENIUS!!!!!!!
    I have an old machine without a gathering foot and have been trying to figure out how to sew a ruffle on the cuff of too short leggings. Same problem, perfect in the waist but too short.
    Thank you so much!!!!!