Frugal Friday- Transforming Cold Weather Clothing Into Warm Weather Clothing...with a tutorial

 Today I am linking up with Terri from Hearts In Service for Frugal Friday. Head on over and see what others are doing to be good stewards with what blessings they have. 

It is that time of year again when must transfer from cold weather clothing to warm weather clothing. Some people live in climates where the temperatures from season to season don't differ much and they don't have to make any changes to their wardrobes. For folks like us who live in a climate where we have very distinct seasons and temperature changes throughout the year, this isn't always a possibility.

Having to maintain multiple wardrobes is expensive, especially when growing children are involved. Today for Frugal Friday I will show you how we help cut the cost of changing seasons when it comes to clothing by modifying our winter pieces into summer pieces.

At the beginning of summer I have my kids try on all their clothes and whatever doesn't fit gets donated or taken to the 2nd hand store where we get store credit for whatever we bring in. The rest of the clothing that fits is evaluated to see which pieces can be used again next year (either for the same child or a different child) and which pieces are good candidates for some up cycling. Those that can be modified I transfer into warm weather clothing by simply cutting off the pants to make shorts, capris or skirts and cutting of long sleeved shirts at the elbows to make a new cooler shirt for the hot temps of summer.

My daughter was able to fit into most of her jeans when I did my evaluation this week. She had one pair of khakis, two pairs of blue denim, one pair of black and one pair of navy pants that fit. This is enough to get her through the summer easily so we got to work.

First thing I did was have her try each pair on again then she decided if she wanted them to be turned into capris or shorts. I then measured and mark each pair so I would know where to cut them off.

Then I laid the jeans out on my table and measured and marked again.

Next I fold the bottoms up and pinned them as shown above.

Make sure you don't pin the front and back of the pant legs together! I have done this numerous times and ended up sewing the leg holes completely shut. Always run your hand up through the leg hole to make sure you didn't make this mistake.

You can choose to cut the remainder off or leave it and go directly to sewing. I choose to cut it off because it tends to annoy me when trying to run it through my machine.

You want to sew about here where I am opining with my pencil. Once you have sewn all the way around and have removed the pins, simply whack any leftover material off and then fold back the bottom. Its best to press the seam at this point to get the results.

This is the end product. I have not pressed the seams yet in this picture but you get the idea. This technique is really usually for blue jeans that have that wonderful factory hem that is hard to replicate. Now you can't even tell they were ever long pants, they look as if they came from the store as a pair of shorts instead.

By the time I was finished my daughter had three pairs of shorts and two pairs of capris for her summer wardrobe and all for basically free. I didn't use the above explained method for each and every pair of pants I modified however. She wanted a few pair to have that trendy frayed looked so for those I simply whacked them off where needed then ran a stitch a little ways from the bottom to keep them fraying beyond where we wanted. After a few washes they will be perfectly and fashionably frayed.

 Here are five pieces finished except for the two pair that will get frayed in the washer later today. These with a few skirts I plan to make using some material from from fabric stashes, will be plenty to get my daughter through the summer which means I won't have to spend a dime on new shorts for this season. Free is about as frugal as you can get. :-)

I was also able to get some good scraps for my fabric stash! Not sure what I will use them for yet but I know something will come up.