Instagram Chooses: Simple Baby Pants Upcycle

I regularly receive bags of clothes and linens that are destined for the trash. These bags always make me so excited because 1: I’m helping to reduce material waste and 2: because there is always so much potential! The new materials to work with, the new clothes to cut up and remake, oh it’s all just so much fun. These baby leggings were in a recent bag that was given to me. Perfect for a baby pants upcycle. They were actually in great condition, nothing at all “wrong” with them but they were just…. blah. Something had to be done, so I turned to Instagram for help!

I decided it would be fun to let my followers on Instagram (are you one of them yet??) help me make decisions on each step of the upcycle process.

Baby Pants Upcycle Step one

I knew that the first step would be dyeing them. So I popped the question on my stories and let my followers choose the color.

But which color??

My story received TONS of color suggestions, but not a single color was mentioned twice. It was here that I realized I should I made it multiple choice instead of such an open question. Oh well, we learn for next time.

I decided to go with the very first color that was suggested. INDIGO.

Cheap as I am, I didn’t want to go out and buy Indigo dye unless I had to. A quick google search told me that indigo is made by mixing 1 part red and 2 parts blue. I already had red and blue dye in my stash so I went with it. And well….. Google lied to me. You can see how it went in the reel I made and posted to Instagram.

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So yeah. The came out purple. A beautiful lavender purple. But very not indigo.

But all is fine and I pressed on.

Next Step

Next up we would add a little skirt attached to the waistband. I thought about letting the people of Instagram choose between bell-bottoms, patches, OR a skirt. But to be honest, I wasn’t feeling great, it was already taking me too long to get my posts out… I just wanted them over with at this point.

So I went rummaging through my fabric stash and found two prints that matched beautifully. I snapped a few pictures, added them to my stories, and let my followers pick which print I would use for the skirt.

I posted as option 1 a purple, blue, and pink plaid. And for option 2 a purple, blue, and white floral and geometric print.

Option number 2 came out victorious!

Which honestly surprised me. I think I would have chosen the plaid.

Just one final step left. All I had then was to actually add the skirt and get it posted. Once again, it took me longer than it should have (*heavy shrug* I’m a busy mama), but I got it done and it came out perfect!

I gathered the fabric and used elastic thread to attach the skirt. I swear I get anxiety every time I use that thread because I’m just expecting things to go wrong! But it has been nothing but good to me. That thread is amazing and it allows for the pants to keep the nice comfortable elastic waist that they started with

Final thoughts on my “Instagram Chooses” Upcycle??

I’m honestly so pleased with the results of this little baby pants upcycle project. It was fun to get my followers involved and see what things they might do differently than me I would. A fresh perspective, if you will. And it was a fun way to get my followers interacting. I hope they felt involved and loved the process as much as I did.

Will I do it again? Absolutely. Maybe not right away, but I will definitely be planning another project for Instagram to help me out with.

And I love the product. This is such a cute piece and the colors are perfect with spring coming up. The skirt length makes it such a practical little girl’s play piece. Cute and girly while still being able to climb, play, and crawl like a kid.

Find them on Esty

I have added these cute pants to my Etsy If you have a little 2-year-old in your life go check them out! you can find them HERE and I’m offering a discount code to anyone who helped with the creative process. If that’s you, just shoot me a message on any platform (Instagram, Facebook, Email, Etsy) and I’ll get you that code as quickly as I can.

I hope you enjoyed this. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!