Have your kids (or you!) got one too many of those novelty Onesies that continue to be so popular?

We were given a couple of hand-me-downs from my nephew which would take my boys four or five years to grow into, so I had the idea to re-make one of them into something more wearable – Tracksuit Bottoms, Hoodie and the added bonus of a pair of Slipper Boots!

It’s not a complicated refashion, but I seemed to take quite a lot of photos so I’ll split this upcycle into three posts, this being the first.

TRACKSUIT BOTTOMS

First up, I took an existing pair of well-fitting tracksuit bottoms and roughly cut the bottom half of the onesie to size.

I left plenty of space to turn up a hem and put the feet to one side for later.

A couple of inches was left at the top to add a little growing room and the top was also put to one side for later.

I started by unpicking and removing the remainder of the zip, then sewed the centre front seam closed.

There was just enough knit fabric leftover from a previous project to make a new waistband. I cut 4″ wide strips and pieced them together to measure the same as the onesie and added a seam allowance. The short ends were sewn right sides together to make a circle.

The new waistband was sewn right sides together with the onesie and the raw edge was overlocked.

The seam was pressed up towards the waistband.

The waistband was folded to the inside where the raw edge was pinned over the seam, enclosing the raw edges and extending over by about 1cm.

I stitched in the ‘ditch’ from the right side, leaving a gap at the centre back to thread the elastic.

I stitched again in the middle, leaving another gap for the elastic.

A final row of top stitching finishes off the top edge neatly.

Two pieces of 1/2″ wide elastic were cut to my son’s waist measurement and threaded through the channels using a safety pin.

The ends of the elastic were sewn together by hand and the gaps in the top stitching were sewn closed by machine.

For the bottom hems, I just overlocked the raw edges and sewed a small hem leaving a gap to thread through some 1/4″ wide elastic.

Et Voilá!

A perfectly good pair of tracksuit bottoms.

Ok, so the T-shirt doesn’t go with them very well, but No.3 son doesn’t care!

So there you go – how to refashion/upcycle an old onesie into a pair of tracksuit (jogging) bottoms:)

Next Post: HOODIE