Making the Crochet Panel Pants
The crochet panel pants are one of my favorite designs I've been making lately. I love it when functionality meets fashion and the garments are a perfect of example of this. When pants don't fit, extra panels can be added to the seams to give you that extra space that you need. I decided to use crochet and I'm so very satisfied with the results.
The inspiration came from trying on a pair of jeans that didn't fit. (I truly feel like we've all been there.) These were from a thrift store and instead of giving up on them, I decided to rework them using granny square panels. I used tan with a blue border in alternating patterns, then crocheted a matching vest to go along with it with tan, and blue.
Making the panel pants isn’t as difficult as it might appear. First, I measure the length of the pants and the waist, then I measure my waist, and I cut both seams. After that, I crochet the granny squares the same size as the length of the pants, and the width of the waist measurements, then stitch the the column of granny squares to the pants. For extra support, I crocheted two belt loops (emulating the denim ones!) and stitched them to the waistband as well.
I was so happy with the first panel pants I made that I decided to try it again with these super skinny jeans that also didn't fit right. This time, I used blue and tan as the colors for the granny square panels and took the denim remnants from the cut-off bottom section of the pants to make a granny square tank top. There’s always something that can be made with your excess material!
I’ve got a whole pile of pants that don’t fit that I plan on making panels for, and I’ll show those once they’re complete!