Today, I’m very excited to be bringing you a cool-weather friendly hack to the Summer Sweatsuit pattern. The Summer Sweatsuit was designed to be worn on the hottest days of the year, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a useful pattern to have in your stash all year round. In today’s blog post, I’ll show you how to adapt the pattern to create your own knit jogger pants sewing pattern. Read on to learn how to hack the pattern to get your own custom jogger pants pattern.
These pants taper to the ankle and are finished at the hem with a cuff. Just like the Summer Shorts, these have a very simple and slim silhouette with no side seam and no pockets. Due to the streamlined design, they’re more like long underwear or long johns than a traditional jogger pant. That doesn’t make me love them any less. They’re the perfect thing to wear when I just need a little extra warmth and I think they’d even work well for layering when it’s very cold.
The Summer Sweatsuit includes a racerback tank top pattern (seen in the photos here) and knit short shorts. The pattern is drafted for hip and bust sizes 32-58 inches. To learn more about the Summer Sweatsuit, check out the introductory blog post. To buy your own copy of the pattern, head over to the shop.
How to hack the Summer Sweatsuit shorts to make knit jogger pants
In addition to the Summer Sweatsuit pattern, you’ll need a flexible measuring tape, tracing paper, a ruler and a pen or pencil.
PREPARING TO DRAFT
To start, you’ll need to take some body measurements and decide a few finished garment measurements. (See the graphic above for a list.) If you’ve already sewn a pair of Summer Shorts, I recommend putting them on to help you determine the length of the leg. Grab your flexible measuring tape and something to take notes with.
Step 1:
First, make a note of your ankle circumference, calf circumference and knee circumference.
Measure from the side waist (at the bottom of the waistband) to where you want the hem of the pants to fall.
Decide the finished height of the cuff. I like a 3” cuff but you can do whatever you prefer.
Calculate Line A: (Side waist to hem) – (Finished cuff height) + (Seam allowance)
Step 2:
The finished hem circumference, will be your ankle circumference plus any additional ease you’d like to add to it. For my joggers, I added about 2” of ease to the ankle measurement. (If you’re making a pair of cropped joggers, you may want to use a lower calf measurement instead of the ankle measurement.) Note, we will draft the cuff piece to be smaller than this opening for a tighter fit at the ankle.
Calculate Line B: (Finished hem circumference) + (Seam allowance X 2)
Step 3:
Make a note of your knee circumference and how far away the knee is from the hem. Decide how much ease you want in the knee. Add the ease to your knee circumference. This is your Finished knee circumference. Calculate Line C.
Calculate Line C: (Finished knee circumference) + (Seam allowance X 2)
NOTE: S.A. stands for seam allowance. This pattern uses 3/8” (1 cm) seam allowance.
STEP 5: Now that we have all the measurements we need, we can start hacking the pattern. Trace the shorts front/back pattern piece onto a piece of paper. Draw Line A, parallel to the grainline from the notch at side waist to hem.
STEP 6: Draw Line B centered at the end of Line A, to mark the end of the pant.
STEP 7: Draw Line C centered at knee height. You may also want to draw in the circumference of your calf for reference.
STEP 8: Draw the back inseam (Line D shown in yellow in the graphic above) connecting from the crotch to the knee (left side of Line C) and ending at the hem (left side of Line B). Double check that there is sufficient ease for the calf and adjust if desired.
STEP 9: Fold the pattern in half along Line A, matching the ends of Line B. Trace Line D to create the front inseam. Unfold the pattern and draw a new front crotch curve to meet the top of the front inseam. (Shown in blue below.)
STEP 10: Trace the new pattern using the original waistline and back crotch curve plus the new inseams and hem. Draw a new longer grainline and mark the original notches. Cut 2 mirror images of this pattern piece along with the original waistband from the pattern and two cuff pieces.
SEWING THE JOGGERS
Stitch the crotch, inseam and waistband as instructed in the pattern booklet.
To sew the cuff, fold right sides together and stitch short ends. Fold wrong sides together along the fold line and press. After assembling the pants, stitch one cuff to the end of each pant leg, stretching the cuff to fit.
I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial. You can pin the image above to save this tutorial for later and make sure to check out the Summer Sweatsuit sewalong for more helpful sewing tutorials and hacks for this pattern. And if you’re looking for a pdf pattern to try, explore the shop below. Happy sewing!
