Since I use men’s dress shirt bodies all the time for dresses and rompers, I often wonder what to do with the sleeves. I chose men’s shirts as a medium because of their detail and the quality of fabrics. It seems wasteful to toss out so much of the fabric, not to mention one of the most detailed part of the shirt- the cuff.

I had once tried to make a pair of bloomers from the sleeves, but they hadn’t turned out and I’d abandoned the idea. Since then I have improved my pattern making skillz. I gave it another try, and with spectacular results! These pants are super cute on all three of my girls, either as pants/bloomers on the baby, cropped pants on my three year old, or shorts on my five year old. I am looking forward to narrowing down my stash of sleeves by making a zillion of these!