Hello Sewing Friends! It’s Tamar from Tamar Hope Designs. I’m here today to teach you how to sew a faux fly. It’s really quite easy to add a faux fly to any pants pattern. I’m adding it to Blue Star in this tutorial instead of sewing a regular zipper. I like faux flies for any kid under 5. It just makes life and potty training so much easier! So, let’s get to it!
First, draw your faux fly on your pattern piece. It should come out about as far as the crotch. Then it should curve back toward the pants center seam. If you are modifying Blue Star and want a flat front, you will also need to eliminate the extra ½ inch for the pleat. The black and yellow lines on this picture show the original pattern lines, so you can see how I adjusted the pattern.
Sew ⅜ inch from the original pants center seam, and finish the faux fly raw edge.
Clip the bottom of the faux fly to the pants center seam without clipping the stitches.
Press the faux fly to the wearer’s left.
Topstitch ¼ inch from the edge of the faux fly. Also topstitch the center seam to the wearer’s left.
For the waistband, you will need to cut the back waistband according to the pattern. For the front waistband, take the measurement of the top of the front leg piece, subtract ⅜” for the center seam allowance, and multiply by 2. For my piece the top of the pants piece is 7 inches. So, 7 - ⅜ = 6 ⅝. So the length of my waistband piece is 6 ⅝ x 2 = 13 ¼”
Now simply sew and attach the waistband according to the pattern directions. The only difference will be that the waistband will be sewn in a loop rather than in a line.
I love the look and ease of a faux fly on little kids’ pants.
And now you can go add faux flies to all of your favorite kid pants patterns!
Happy Sewing!
-Tamar