How to Make Tearaway Pants

Athletes use tearaway pants when warming up for sports.

Tearaway pants are useful for sports, as you can wear them over shorts and then tear them away without having to take off your shoes. Tearaway pants are also used in live theater, as they allow for faster costume changes backstage. You can make tearaway pants from just about any pair of pants, but you will usually want to choose pants that are larger than your normal size, as they will need to be cut and folded over, resulting in a few inches lost around the waist and the legs.

Things You'll Need

• Scissors
• Pants
• Straight pins
• Snap fasteners
• Sewing machine
• Thread
• Needle

Instructions

1. Cut the pants on both sides from the waist all the way down each leg vertically. Choose a spot behind the seam on the side of the pants to maintain the original look of the seam, especially if you will be using the pants for live theater.

2. Fold an inch of material over toward the inside of the pants and use straight pins to hold it into place. Repeat this for each cut seam.

3. Lay the pants out and line up the seams. The snap comes in four pieces, with two for each side of the snap. Press the teeth of the backing piece through the fabric and snap it together with the front piece. The backing piece should be placed inside the overlap of fabric facing inward. You do not need to make holes in the fabric ahead of time. The front half of the pants should overlap the back half when snapped together.

4. Line up the other two pieces of the snap with the half of the snap that is already in place. Place the backing piece inside the overlap on the other half of the pants facing out and press the teeth through the fabric. Snap the teeth of the backing piece into the front piece.

5. Sew the overlapping material with a sewing machine or by hand using a matching thread.

Tips & Warnings

• You can use hook and loop fasteners for your tearaway pants, but the process of sewing the fasteners is more difficult, and tearing away the pants is noisy.

References

• Snap Source: The Snap Source Intro to Snap Fasteners