Leggings With Flare

The skirt my daughter is wearing is too big and so it's not reall doing justice to these super cute leggings!  I had a couple of followers email me because they found some really cute leggings and wondered if I could show how to make them.  So Sara and Marissa, this is for you!!         I whipped up the leggings and wanted to make a matching hairbow, but didn't have enough scrap ribbon, so I just gathered what scrap I had and hand-tacked it on a shirt instead.  My daughter loves it all and wore this outfit for two days straight.  You will not believe how easy this is - let's get started:

First, gather your supplies.  "The Look" is to have the leggings hit mid-calf.  I happened to have some footless tights in my giveaway pile because they were too small for my daughter - perfect.  Too small just meant too short - they'll still fit around the waist.  If you need to go buy footless tights, buy a size too small so they'll be short.  And then I had some leftover ribbon - that's where you can be creative - try some wild colors!

As I was considering how to make these, I figured you'd gather the ribbon, then sew it on to the tights - pretty simple.  But it's even easier than that!  I was thinking about my earlier use of my gathering foot and how it works, and thought of a new plan:

When you put the tights around the arm of the sewing machine, they are pulled taunt.  So when you sew the ribbon on top, they're feeding through at different rates - same concept behind the genius of the gathering foot, and you don't need any special foot.  So just sew on the ribbon, making sure that the tights are pulled tight.  When you take them off the arm of the machine, you'll see that it ruffles up all on it's own.

Since I wasn't sure how much ribbon it would take to go around the bottom of the tights, I waited to cut the length until it was sewed down, so it didn't have a finished edge.  I just overlapped a little, then folded the end over and sewed it down, as shown:

Seriously, that was it!!  Sew a ribbon on the bottom of footless tights, and voila, Leggins With Flare!  Some more pics of my daughter - she would not stand still!  And really these look so much cuter in person!

Are you digging through your discarded tights stash right now?....

Update: Here's the link where you can find similiar leggings for sale - check out BonBonCupcakes and all they have to offer (I'm sure theirs are much higher quality than mine) - their stuff is really cute!  I LOVE how they package the leggings -just like cupcakes!!