For Halloween Bryce was Vanilla Bryce! It was a huge hit!
Many people have asked where we came up with the idea. Well I have to give all the credit to Scott. He calls Bryce all sorts of nick names like Bryce-a-roni, Bryce-krispy, Vanilla Bryce. So I made up my mind I was going to make some hammer pants and I never looked back. I have gotten a lot of question on how in the world I made the hammer pants. I didn't use any sort of pattern, so I will try to do my very best explaining it to you. Bryce already had a pair of hammer-ish looking pants. They are pajama bottoms made by Carters. They have an elastic waste, baggy through the but and thigh, then taper tightly around the ankle area with a band of elastic around the bottom. I decided I would use these pants as my template.
I bought some awesome gold fabric at Hobby Lobby. (I should really get an endorsement from Hobby Lobby). I layed the pajama pants on the gold fabic. I eye balled it. Yes, that's how I do things around this place. Who has time to add and subtract quarter inches and measure a squirming toddler? Not me. So I traced the outline of the pajama pants with a sharpie. When I traced the pants, I stayed at least an inch away from the pants to allow for a seam allowance and to create extra bagginess. I also purposely made the crotch about 2 inches lower than the pajama pants because this is what makes hammer pants hammer pants. When I say I stayed an inch away, again I was eye balling so it was by no means perfect. I cut out 2 of the outlined pajama pants.
I placed the 2 pieces right sides together and stitched up the outside and inside length of the leg. I did not hem them at all. Again, I don't have time for that. Also, he is wearing these pants once and never again, so it really is a waste of time. If you are washing and wearing these pants regularly, you should hem them.
I bought some elastic at Hobby Lobby (I think it was 1/4 inch but it really doesn't matter) to use for the waist and bottom of the legs. Now I use a really janky method to sew in elastic. I basically taught myself to sew in a era when there was no such thing as a you tube tutorial so I actually do a lot of weird things when I sew. What I did was put the elastic around Bryce's waist to see how long of piece I needed. You want it to be tight (but not too tight) I cut the elastic to the correct length and then sewed the ends together. Now you have a circle of elastic ready to be "installed" into the pants. I think the correct term is "sew a casing", but who are we trying to impress?
So I places the circle of elastic in the pants and folded the fabric over the elastic. I stitched the fabric down. This was not perfect at all. It puckered up in places, and the slick gold fabric slid all the over the place. No one is going to notice anyways. His shirt covered up the waste of the pants anyways. Again, he was only going to wear it once, so no need for perfection. I did this same process around the bottom of the legs.
It took 1 hour and about $10 to make.
Around lunch, he sat down and busted the seam in the crotch. This fabric was super stretchy and I probably didn't use a close enough stitch to really hold it. But again, not a big deal at all, it was a one time thing.
I added a gold chain and a t-shirt with gold lettering to the outfit. I simply cut out the letters myself and used fusible Pellon to iron the letters on the shirt.
I actually had a bunch of pictures on my phone at one point to use a demo but I had to delete them because I was out of memory. Story of my life. sigh.
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