Making Cactus Pants using this FREE Pattern - I’d Rather DIY Ep 002

I'm back with another episode of "I'd Rather DIY"! In today's video, I decided to take on the challenge of making my own pair of pants from scratch.

I've been inspired to dive into my fabric stash lately, and I couldn't resist the urge to turn some beautiful fabrics into a cute pair of pants. With boxes of fabric waiting to be transformed, I decided it was time to put them to good use.

After scouring some fashion websites for inspiration, I settled on a bold and colourful cactus print that instantly caught my eye. Although I didn't have quite enough fabric to make the entire pair of pants, I got creative and incorporated some complementary fabric into the design.

Choosing the perfect pattern was the next step, and after exploring a few options, I found a free pattern on the Peppermint Magazine website that suited my needs perfectly. With the pattern printed and the fabric selected, I was ready to dive into the project.

Throughout the video, I take you through each step of the process, from cutting out the pattern pieces to sewing the final seams. I even share some tips and tricks along the way to make the process as smooth as possible.

And the end result? Well, I couldn't be happier with how these pants turned out! They're comfy, stylish, and totally unique to my personal style. Plus, I managed to use up almost all of the fabric, minimizing waste and maximizing creativity.

If you're interested in trying out this project for yourself, I'll leave a link to the pattern in the video description below. And don't forget to leave a little pants emoji in the comments if you made it all the way to the end of the video!

Thanks for watching, and be sure to subscribe to my channel for more DIY fashion projects every Friday. Until next time, happy sewing! 👖

Full Video Transcript

Hey, I'm Carley Rose and this is my studio. Welcome back to the second episode of my new series I'd Rather DIY where I find a piece of clothing that I really want and I make it myself. I just had this really great idea come to my mind so I started filming straight away because I think I'm gonna go ahead and make myself a pair of pants today. Lately, I've been really inspired to go through my fabric stash and start using up some of what I've got because I have so many containers full of fabric and I found that out when I moved here because I had to load each one of them up ready for the movers to move down here and there's like 16 boxes of fabric and it's like way too many so my job is to try and work through those now. Let's make this pair of pants. I'm going to show you guys some pieces that have inspired me to make the pants I want to make today and let's get on with the project.

Okay so I've had a little look on Dangerfield because they often have really fun prints and I like their styles and their silhouettes so I've just had a look on their website for some inspiration and I actually really like their overalls. They're from princess highway. They've got a few of these styles but I don't want overalls. I just want the pants but I like how high these pants are wasted and then they just have like really bold prints on them. I think I want to use like try and use some bold patterns because I feel like my whole wardrobe is very monochrome like I wear grey and jeans a lot and and black but I'm kind of sick of it I'm ready to be inspired by some Melbourne style and actually um start wearing a lot more colour and patterns. I've had a look at these these were really cool too they're like a titan pant um I like the shape of these. I do have some tartan and some gingham but I think I might save them for another time because I've only found a few really small pieces so far and there might be more in my stash but i'm gonna have to go through it and find them so I will save that for another time but I do like the the cut of these pants too I like that length.

So I've had a little look for a pattern to use. I do have a really nice high-waisted wide leg pant pattern but it has a tuck in the top and I think I just want these to be flat so I did find this pattern for free on the peppermint website. I will leave a link for it in the description below i'm a subscriber to peppermint magazine it's all about sustainability and it's got a lot on sustainable fashion so I think you can still get this pattern without having to be a subscriber you just need to sign up to their mailing list i'm pretty sure so i'll leave a link for that it's free for personal use and then I did find this pattern as well but it's 35.50 and I just don't really want to spend money if I don't have to today i'm trying to use fabric I've already got and trying to do this on a budget so I like the look of this because it's actually like a jeans pattern with a really nice um shape and fit and they're high-waisted too but I think if I want to add some of those like jeans elements to my pants then I can pattern make that myself and add it in later so i'm just about to print this pattern I just printed the first page so that I could measure the test swatch and it all seems good so just make sure when you print something like this you're not fitting it to your page because you want it to be the size that they've created it so that when you print all your pages together and they all fit together then the measurements of the pattern pieces are all right and all that stuff so i'm gonna go print the rest of this out now and i'll start sticking it together.

Okay so I’ve just finished cutting out my pattern it wasn't too hard to cut out it's just that there's a lot of different sizes printed on that same sheet so you have to make sure you're cutting on the right line but um I think that has sizes 6 to 24 so if you guys want to make the same pair of pants I’m making again I’m just going to leave a link below and you can print it at home so if you are back in lockdown or anything you can still do this project but I’m just about to rummage through all my boxes of fabric I don't know if you can see just behind me there in the wardrobe is stuck some of it is fabric and some of it is old pieces of clothing that I can also use and then behind me here I’ve got about eight boxes most of those have fabric and some of them have some garments I've made but I've got lots of boxes of fabric that I have access to so i'm going to go through those now and see what I can find and hopefully I can find enough fabric to make these pants so after having a little look through a few of the boxes that I could access I did find this really cute cactus print it's on a cotton drill fabric and the background is like an off-white color I had about two meters of this fabric which just wasn't enough to make the pants but I had an idea and I thought I would split the back of the pants into panels and in the panels I would put this white cotton drill that I already have on a roll and i'm just dyeing it a little bit more off-white with some tea this is really easy to do I didn't really mess around with it too much it did look a little bit splotchy when I did it but it ended up having a nice like tie-dye look to it and now it's a much better match for the other fabric than just plain white would have been.

So I’m just cutting out all the parts of the pattern that I need you'll see I’ve got most of the pattern pieces in the cactus print I’ve got my panel I just split the back pair of the pants down through the dart to make it into the two panels and then I’m cutting that out of the t-stain fabric and the only other fabric I use for these pants was for inside the pocket I’ve used some calico just so I’m not adding too much bulk in the top of the pants and here I’m just figuring out how much fabric I need to block fuse to make my waistband block fusing is where you fuse the fabric before you cut the pieces out of it so I’m just cutting out my piece to do that and then I’ll head over to the iron shortly and iron on my fusing.

All right guys I’m not going to talk over this whole video because I think I’m just going to let this one be kind of a relaxing one for you guys to watch if you guys do want to know the exact steps I followed to make this pattern it does actually come with its own set of instructions and you can just follow those on the same website where I’ll leave the link where you can actually download the pattern I will just explain that all I’m doing here is tracing around a pair of jeans pockets from a pair of jeans that fits me really well to make my pattern to add to these paints today and just adding a quarter or I think half-inch seam allowance around the outside and then a two cm rolled top hem

and then I just sewed around the edges of that to attach it but other than that all the instructions are in the file that you can download so I’ll just let you guys sit back and watch how I make these pants and you can see how they turned out at the end.

Are you guys ready to see how these pants turned out because I cannot tell you how stoked I am with how they turned out okay ready look at them I think they look so cool.

They're super comfy so they fit really nicely they're a little bit loose right now but what I tend to find is i'll eat my lunch and the pans i'm wearing are like too tight so I went a size up sort of so that when I do eat they're still comfortable and they've got room to grow and otherwise they can just sit down a bit further on my hips but they can be like this high waisted and the pockets are nice and big and there's I've added these two extra pockets on the back so I usually like to put my phone in that pocket but I've got these front pockets as well and the little button I found this button in my stash and I thought it was like really cute like it looks like a jeans button and you guys saw me dye this fabric with tea now that was mainly because I didn't have enough fabric to make the whole pair of jeans or pants just out of the cactus fabric which I really like I think it's so cute and funky I wanted to match the colour that's like in the background of the print and it's it was more of a beige than a white and when I dyed it with the tea this cotton it did go like a bit darker than this colour but I still think it's turned out really nice I know it doesn't go so well with this grey top I think it would be nice if I could get like a beige or a brown top to go with this but this is all I really have for now like I said i'm trying to expand my my wardrobe with this at the moment so I actually am going to be making a video soon where I make my version of these skivvy tops so if that's something you want to see then don't forget to subscribe because i'm going to bring that one out very soon and I think that's everything again i'm going to leave you guys the link to the pattern for these pants in the description because it is a really great pattern and it does come with a full set of instructions so you can follow that for how to make them I didn't really follow the instructions because I've made pants before and I just did it the way that I've done it before but you would have seen I did use a video to help me do the fly zipper and the pattern actually wanted the fly zipper around the other way because that's how you'd normally make a women's pair of jeans but sorry a women's pair of pants but jeans are always the same for men and women and I wanted to make them feel a bit more like jeans so I did that instead you could also add belt loops which I've thought about doing but I think i'll just leave them how they are for now oh and the only other thing is i'm going to go and get all the scraps and show you what's left because I used pretty much all of the fabric which is really good because there's not much waste so this is all the scraps I ended up having left over from the tea stained fabric and the cactus fabric so there's actually not a lot here i'll show you the biggest parts I still have these two pieces left which I could do something with and I am going to keep all of the big scraps to use in other projects.

I'm looking at doing some patchwork and things like that sometimes I can make headbands or scrunchies out of the scraps but i'll just put them aside for now and then I also have a strip of the tea dyed fabric left I might also be able to make that into scrunchies i'll do something with that as well anyway so it was pretty good that I could use up all of the cactus fabric because it's been sitting in my stash for a little while and I think when I first bought it I was gonna make bags out of it but I ended up not doing that project so they just it sat in my stash but when I can do a project that uses like the whole piece of fabric that I have it just it's really satisfying to me because now I don't have to figure out how to use up the rest except for the scraps which i'll just use with other fabrics eventually so yeah i'm really happy with the result i'm looking forward to using this pattern again i'm definitely going to make it again because I want to make some pants with different lengths and I've got some different ideas for different prints and different using different techniques and stuff that I can use to change up the pattern a bit so keep an eye out for videos about that in the future please let me know in the comments if you guys have a go at making this pattern again I think it's a really good one to have a go at it's not too tricky the only really tricky part for me was the fly zipper and I always have a bit of trouble um sewing the waistband so that was a little bit tricky but in the end um these pants are pretty straightforward and I made them a bit more complex by splitting the back panels in half but overall it's a really good pattern to work with so yeah let me know in the comments if you ever have a go at making these pants and apart from that if you did make it all the way to the end of this video please leave a little pants emoji in the comments below so I know who you are and I can thank you personally for watching the whole video if you found this video useful or entertaining please give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more videos I put out new videos every Friday thank you guys so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one. Bye!