Megan Nielsen | Mini Virginia Leggings and Briar Tee

When Megan Nielsen announced her line of “Mini” patterns for kids, I was super excited! I immediately signed up for testing, and tested the Mini Virginia Leggings. One thing I particularly love about the new patterns is the size range. Now that my oldest daughter is a, um, “tween”, she’s outsized of most kids patterns. These patterns make it up to a size 12, so they’ll cover all three of my girls for now. For testing, I made the larger size for my oldest daughter. I prefer to make a straight size (unaltered) for testing purposes, and really I made them a size too big and ended up taking them in significantly. In retrospect, my fabric was also a bit too stretchy, so unfortunately my test wasn’t the most accurate representation of the pattern. Regardless, she wears them all the time even if the fit is a little off.

I still wanted to give the pattern another shot, so the other day I made up a pair for my youngest daughter, Isabella, who is 8. She’s itty bitty for her age, so I always run into the problem of her clothes being way too wide, or way too short. Also, being the third girl in line, her clothes are practically in rags by the time they make it to her closet! Basically, the leggings situation for her was dire. Her waist puts her in a size 4/5, but her height is in the 6/7 range. To accommodate, I traced off a 4/5, but added length to the rise and legs to correspond to the 6/7.

This sizing alteration worked out perfectly, and she is so very happy with them! The fabric I used is a nice thick cotton spandex that was leftover from an older project. Since my machines were all out and threaded, I quickly made her a second pair in grey, also from leftover fabric. I suspect more requests for leggings will be rolling in, as daughter no. 2 was giving me serious side eye for making Izzie not just one, but two new pairs of leggings.

Oh, and let’s not forget this tee… more scrap busting here! I found a large-ish scrap of this fabric in one of my bins, and I was able to just squeeze out a Briar Tee. Bonus points that it matches both pairs of leggings! I was on limited fabric yardage here, so I went with the longer variation, but cut it shorter by a size (6/7, cut to a 4/5 in length). I think this worked out really well, and she is absolutely in love with it. My girls really love the longer back hemline, so… more requests have been made. Isabella wore this outfit to school the very next day and bragged on it to her friends who were totes impressed that I made a tee shirt and two pairs of leggings in one afternoon.

So far, these patterns are huge winners in this household. I love them, my kids love them… there will be many repeats!

Mini Tania Culottes | Mini Briar Sweater and Tee | Mini Virginia Leggings | Mini Wardrobe Pack

—lisa g.

Disclosure: I was a tester for the Mini Virginia Leggings, and received the whole trio of finished patterns gratis. No blogging required, but hello! They’re adorable and I would have shared anyway.