As I've mentioned before, we live rurally. We have grass, rocks, mud and a creek all within 100 feet of our house. Not to mention plans for gardening and painting and all sorts of other messy things once the weather turns nice.G-Girl is usually right in the middle of our projects. And the mud. And the paint. I subsidize our clothing budget by consigning her clothes that are still in good shape by the time we're past the season or the time she outgrows them. To this end I try to keep her stuff in pretty good shape. But she is a kid and should not be deprived of a muddy, grass-stained, paint-covered childhood. So I have developed her summer "trash me" wardrobe.
One of the dresser drawers at her level (since she now likes to pick out her clothes) will contain her every-day Trash Me clothes. The ones that are for the days where we're not going any farther than the back yard. This drawer will have Trash Me Pants, and a stash of T-shirts dedicated to messiness.
The central piece of the Trash Me Wardrobe is the Trash Me Pants. I gathered up a stack of old/extra t-shirts we had around and refreshed my memory RookieMoms directions for re-purposing adult T-shirts into toddler/youth pants. Then I got to work! I expanded the concept to use the long-sleeves from a long sleeve T-shirt for the legs of the toddler pants. Since the stack of T-shirts that I started with were white - some with screen printing and some with stains. So I picked up a packet of black dye to hide the stains they started with and so the pants wouldn't look totally nasty after a good afternoon in the yard. Since I put too much fabric in the dye batch they ended up more of a steel-grey, but that's just fine. I wasn't going for perfection on this project, just completion!
The elastic was about $3 with a coupon at Joanns and the dye was $2.50. The old T-shirts were re-purposed and I had the thread on hand. The cost of the project and 8 pair of pants/shorts/crops was under $6. That works for me!
This post is linked up at We Are That Family: Works For Me Wednesday.
Wow! I love that idea! My 4 year old has been trashing her own pants which fortunately have been thrifted; they definitely could become shorts. However, I could repurpose some of the adult shirts and make new shorts for her for the summer, too.
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