Big Girl Underwear: tutorial for girl's 2T/3T underwear

At 2 1/2 years old, I can proudly say my daughter is fully potty trained! Literally the afternoon that I posted about Haley's ghetto fabulous potty chart, she made the final step and went #2 in the potty. This day needs to be an official holiday or something. I have never been so happy about poo.

When she first started potty training, we bought my daughter a couple packages of "big girl underwear" to use. Since she's now officially potty trained, she needed more pairs than we had originally purchased. I had a lot of knit fabric laying around, so I thought it'd be fun to make her some myself!

I will say that it took me a lot longer than anticipated to make underwear, but it's fun to see my daughter running around in underwear I made myself. I think it would also be fun to involve your child in making her own Big Girl Underwear by allowing her to use a stamp and some fabric paint or fabric markers to make designs on her underwear to get her excited about potty training.

Supplies for Girl's 2T/3T Underwear:

• Download the free pattern HERE
• Knit fabric for main pieces and bias tape (I used some t-shirts I had sitting around - don't use really thin knit though! Comfy jersey shirts work well for this.)
• 1/4 inch elastic
• Ballpoint needle (helps a ton when sewing with knit fabric)
• Sewing machine and basic sewing supplies

Step 1: Cut out your pieces.

Download and cut out your pattern pieces and place them on top of your knit fabric Trace around your pattern pieces and cut out. You should now have 3 pieces (left to right): your front piece your crotch piece and your back piece.

Step 2: Sew the front and back pieces together.

Place your front piece on top of your back piece, right sides together. Match up the edges of the crotch area and pin.

Sew straight across to join. When you open your piece up, it should look like this with the line you just sewed on the inside of the underwear:

Next, take your crotch piece and iron down each end 1/4 inch. Place on top of the crotch area, ironed side down, making sure to overlap the edge of your crotch piece with the edge you just sewed on the underwear. Pin and sew both ends down.

Step 3: Add bias tape.

You can buy bias tape from the store, but I chose to make my own out of knit fabric because it's much more comfortable for little legs.

To make your own, cut strips 2 inches wide and 13 inches long from your knit fabric. Fold your piece in half wrong sides together and iron, then fold either side toward the crease in the middle and iron. That's it!

Line each leg with the bias tape by sandwiching the raw edge of your fabric inside of the bias tape. Pin and sew down the length of each leg. This is the easy way of sewing bias tape on. I won't bore you with the details of the hard (and proper) way of sewing on bias tape :)

Step 4: Finish the leg holes.

Cut 13 1/2 inches of 1/4 inch elastic for each leg and use a safety pin to thread it through one of the openings of your bias tape on each leg hole.

Let the ends of the elastic stick out the ends of the leg holes a little.

With your underwear inside out, match up the sides and pin from the waist to the top of the leg hole. Sew the sides closed, making sure you catch both ends of the elastic when you sew.

Trim off any additional fabric and elastic that still may be sticking out.

Step 5: Create your waistband.

With the underwear still inside out, fold the waistband 1/4 inch and iron, then fold down another 1/4 inch and iron. Sew your waistband closed.

Cut 19 inches of elastic and use a safety pin to thread it through your waistband.

And now you have a homemade pair of big girl underwear for your big girl!

I won't embarrass my daughter by posting pictures of her little bum in underwear all over the internet, but just know that she loves them :)

Do you have a little boy who's potty training? There's a great tutorial over at Home Sweet Homebodies on how to make your own Easy On Potty Training Pants for little boys.

Check out my sidebar to see where I link up each week!

Potty Party!

 Finally, after a good 8 1/2 months of begging, pleading, bribery, and countless bags of Reeses Minis, Haley is  potty trained (and probably has a mouth full of cavities)! After months of hearing "no pee pee!" she finally gave into the fact that, as convenient as diapers may be, it's just not socially acceptable to wear them into your teenage years. Our grocery bill is rejoicing.

Thanks for all the great potty training advice you offered in May! After evaluating our options, we decided to stick with the "stickers and candy" method of potty training. We went to Sam's Club and stocked up on a ridiculously large box of Reeses Minis and got to work. She got one piece of candy for sitting on the potty, then another when she did the deed. And by the way, I think would be a much happier place if we each got candy every time we went to the potty. Just throwing that out there.

For awhile, nothing happened. If she did go, it was because we happened to catch her at the right time, which of course still resulted in much praise and excitement from Patrick and I. This was more or less confusing for her at first. All she knew was that we stole her pants, plopped her down on some strange toy with a hole in it, and then made lots of noise and clapping when she stood up. But hey, she got chocolate, and that was good enough for her.

When she began to catch on I decided to make things more fun for her, so I bought supplies to make her a potty chart, similar to the one on Prudent Baby.

source: Prudent Baby

Theirs is all cute and color coordinated, and they even have printable labels to go along with the chart. But I was feeling lazy and didn't feel like printing anything at the time. (Because there's obviously a lot of effort that goes into pressing the "print" button...) So I decided to make my own version:

I know, nailed it right? 
(totally being sarcastic...)

Believe me, I wasn't trying to make it nearly as cute as the ladies at Prudent Baby did. I used a piece of poster board and some crayons, then did my best to draw a chart...thing. I let Haley help me decorate it because it thought she might get more excited about something that she helped make. I had to suppress the desire to tell her not to color inside of the potty chart and just let her do her thing, but my OCD was definitely twitching. I also had to suppress the desire to tell her to put the stickers in the right place, even when she has only gone pee pee in the potty.

On a side side note - do any of you other moms out there catch yourself saying "pee pee" when you're referring to yourself? On a date night recently, I had to catch myself from telling my husband I was "going to go pee pee in the potty." Part of having a great marriage is all about good communication people ;)

Now, how to master #2?

No pee pee

**After waiting and waiting....and more waiting, Blogger still hadn't recovered my post so I had to republish this, but in doing so, I lost all of your comments :(  Thank you all for your helpful tips on potty training! We've had 2 small successes (with a little bribing with chocolate chips), and I'm hoping for more progress! Feel free to leave more tips if you want! We need some advice from you experienced potty trainers :)** 

My daughter has officially started potty training. Again. Ok well this is our second try, but for REAL this time, she's started potty training.

The first time we tried was in December. The Hubs and I did some research and found the Boon Potty Bench.

Part potty, part functional bench for standing at the sink, kneeling at the bathtub, etc. You know I love me some combo's when it comes to kid stuff - it's just so much easier to buy things that function as more than one item rather than having to buy something else separately later. We have the crib that converts to a toddler bed, the combo kid's bath tub/kneeling bench (yes another bench, don't judge me), the stroller/carseat/blender. Ok, that last part isn't true, but wouldn't it be sweet to be able to make a smoothie as you're walking your kid around the block?

Anyway, Haley got a potty for Christmas and acted relatively interested in it. A good sign, I thought. Until we actually tried the potty training thing with panties and all. I was on maternity leave with Connor, so it seemed like the obvious time to try to train her. I spent a good part of the day with a bottle of carpet cleaner and a rag in my hand following her around going, "Do you need to go pee pee? You need to go pee pee. Please pee pee?" And then after I put her on the potty, she'd stand up 10 seconds later and say, "No pee pee." Then she'd go in her panties 5 minutes later, and I'd be scrubbing the floor yet again. So we decided she wasn't ready yet.

Well as luck would have it, there are 2 other kids in her daycare that needed to be potty trained as well so with that and the fact that she's now over 2, we decided to give it another go beginning last week. We bought the Pull Ups (becase we don't want to torture the daycare workers with the possibility of 3 wet children running around all day) and started being consistent with taking her to the potty at home and at daycare. We've tried to bribe her with everything she loves: chips, stickers, candy, ice cream.

Nothing.

We've given her praise, I made up a potty song, we've set her on the potty for a set time, and still, "no pee pee." If I was a stay-at-home mom, I feel like things would be so much easier because I could let her run around naked all day long and let her do her thing. But since that's generally frowned upon in public settings, we need to get creative.



Anybody else have any good ideas? We've never done this before, so any pointers would be welcome.