I love putting little legwarmers on Sam, she looks like such a little 80’s popstar. The only problem is right now my sock legwarmers (tutorial here) just aren’t warm & cozy enough. That’s when I got to thinking about how much I love my knit leggings from Target, hmmm, those would be perfect for leg warmers, hmmm, what could I use to make them…AHA! Sweater arms, duh!
All you’ll need is an old sweater, preferably a child’s size so the tubes won’t be too big. I picked up a size 6 in the kid’s clearance section at Old Navy for less than $5. Also get yourself some thin elastic that is cut to the circumference of right above your child’s calf + 1″, that’s it!
First I cut off the arms, then to make sure they wouldn’t unravel while I was messing with them I ran a quick zig–zag stitch around the top of the tube.

*TIP* when sewing with sweater material I found it didn’t get all stretched out if I lightly pushed the fabric towards the needle as I fed it through the machine. That way it was stitched into place while it was completely unstretched.
Next you need to make a casing for the elastic, it’s just like sewing a waistband. Fold over the top about 3/4″ & stitch into place leaving a 1″ opening for running the elastic through. Using a safety pin attached to one end of your elastic (the pin is just so you have something to hold onto so you can easily thread the elastic through your casing) thread the elastic through. Normally I would stitch the two ends of elastic together but since the one I’m using is so thin I just double knotted them nice & tight. Stitch your opening closed & ta-da! Sweater legwarmers! So darn cute you don’t even need the dress. At least that’s what Samster says.

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