Two pieces of children's clothing from a metre of fabric? (Part 2 - Playsuit)

In my last post, I started telling you about the first piece of children's clothing I made from one of the fabrics I bought from  a lovely fabric shop called Quilted Raven, while travelling through Anchorage, Alaska. This fabric is called Bear Mountain.

The first, in my earlier post, was the toddler pants shown on the left, made for baby Ada.  In this post, I'll tell you about the playsuit for Ada's cousin Fleur. The challenge was to get them both out of this one piece, which was actually fractionally over a metre in length, as it was the bolt end.

Fleur is almost 5 going on 7 or 8, height-wise. She is very particular about what she will wear. Nothing 'itchy', nothing frilly, and preferably, not a dress. She will just about put on a dress for church (sometimes - and she'd rather not). A skirt is more acceptable, but less so than shorts or trousers. However, Mum bought her a playsuit, which she liked, and which they both thought was a bit smarter than jeans for going out, whether church or elsewhere. So Mum asked that the next thing I would make should be another playsuit. 

One of my favourite free patterns, used again and again for the girls, is the Summer Romper by Purl Soho. I still love it, but for Fleur, now, it is probably a bit too fussy and 'itchy' with the bows to undo on the shoulder. Also, it's not as easy to get on and off for using the loo, as her bought playsuit. And anyway, it's nearly autumn now! So I decided I'd adapt the Purl Soho pattern with a more bodice type of top. I plan to draw out the pattern for this and add it to the blog when I have time.

First, the shorts part. This came straight from the Purl Soho pattern, but with legs about an inch longer. The Purl Soho Summer Romper pattern has two pattern pieces for the shorts  - front and back (Hooray - correct!) Actually, I made a small mistake here, and cut the back inside leg seam on the size 5 line instead of size 7 - so I had to join little pieces on. Silly me. Only realised when I came to try and sew them together and the back seam line was longer than the front. Of course no-one else would ever do anything as stupid. (Wait till you see my even worse mistake later!)

You can see I had to go into the selvedge to be able to get all the pieces out, but I figured that was within the seam allowance so it wouldn't show. 

Here, I've first pinned together the two crutch seams, as suggested in the Purl Soho tutorial. There are multiple ways of putting shorts and pants together. I used a different one  for the baby's long shorts in the previous post. I continued to follow the tutorial to complete the shorts part, including finishing the leg hems. I then put these aside, whilst making the top part.

So to the top. I wanted to replace the Purl Soho top (with strings that tie over the shoulder) with a front opening bodice-style top. The challenge is that most of the bodice top patterns I have are narrower in the waist than these gathered shorts, and also stop short at the natural waist (or higher). So it was going to require a bit of modification whatever I did. In other words, I made my own pattern. At some stage, I will try and draw out this pattern to include as a freebie, but in the meantime, here's how I did it.

 The top from the Purl Soho Summer Romper is wider than a normal bodice because it is gathered top and bottom, back and front, with elastic. (Shown by the striped bits on the above diagram.) It also only comes up to about halfway up a normal armscye, because it has ties that go over the shoulders. As I wasn't going to gather it at the top, but only at the bottom where it joins the shorts, I needed a narrower top, but the bottom needed to be wide enough to match the shorts part. I used an armscye from another pattern to draw an extended armscye right to where the shoulder would be, slanted the shoulder up a bit towards the neck, and added a curved neckline. (Actually, I would make the front neckline a bit lower next time, I've ended up with a rounder neckline than I intended, but it's fine. I'll correct that if I manage to make a freebie pattern.) Then I added to the width at the front fold, 1 1/2" for a centre front opening with an overlap.

This next picture is supposed to show you the centre front opening with overlap (the inside, pinned together). Well, it sort of does. But in fact, I'd made a huge and stupid mistake here. 

You may be able to see why in this next picture. I was quite pleased with myself having made a nice little binding of some striped fabric. Then I looked at what I'd done. Can you see how small the opening is? It would be fine if this was a dress, that you would just drop over your head - you'd just need enough for the head to go through. But in fact, this is an all-in-one playsuit, so Fleur has to be able to step into it from the top - this is not nearly a big enough opening to step into, and get your hips through, even if you are not quite 5!

Oops again! Luckily, I did have a front centre seam going all the way to the waist. So I had to unpick the opening facings, and extend these right down to the waist. (As in the picture below.)

Just a word here about the little collar, or stand-up neck binding. The stripey fabric I used (which I'd used for the cuffs of the toddler shorts) was very slightly stretchy. But I cut the rectangle for this binding on the cross, to give it more stretchiness to go round the curves. This was about 2 1/4" by the length of the neckline plus a bit for seam allowance at the front ends. I'd allowed for a 3/8" seam allowance on both edges, and the finished collar, folded, was to be about 3/4". So 2 x 3/4" plus 2 x 3/8" = 2 1/4". I pressed this in half lengthwise, and the two seam allowances, to make it easier to sew - so it looked a bit like a double fold bias tape. I attached one of the seam allowances to the outside. Next, with it inside out (i.e. right sides together, I rounded the front ends and trimmed and pressed them. Then I hand sewed the inside seam allowance. (I couldn't figure out how I could do it neatly enough by machine, and it wasn't a very long seam anyway.)

The armholes, however, were more simply finished, with single bias tape. You could do that with the neckline as well, but I liked my stripey collar.

Once I'd made the shorts and the bodice top part, I joined them together in the same way as the Purl Soho summer romper, and added  some double fold bias binding (which happened to be the same colour as the single tape used on the armholes). A gap is left to thread elastic through.

Then I hand stitched the gap after the elastic was inserted and joined.

All that remained was to attach some fasteners. You could do buttons and button holes (Hate doing button holes.) Or you could do hammer-in snap fasteners. I do often use those, but I find they are not so easy for kids to undo on their own - risks ripping the garment, as they are quite stiff or tight.So I sewed on plastic sew-on press-studs, which are not so stiff, so she can undo it herself. (You could also dispense with the overlap altogether, and put in a zip, but I thought the overlap was neater.)

Finally - finished! Very happy with the end result, even if I did make a couple of the more dumb mistakes I've made in a long time in my sewing. But I did manage to match the pattern pretty well across the bodice front opening, don't you think? Even though I was very tight for material.

 When Fleur tried it on, it was a cooler day than has been the case in this very hot summer, so she tried it on over a baggy jumper! But it still fits her OK. She's also wearing a big smile which you can't see in these pictures, so I guess she's happy!

And how did I do? Did I make these two items from (just over) 1 metre of fabric? Well, this is all I had left after making both - so not much went to waste!

On the other hand, I did make trims of another fabric, so you could say I cheated a bit. But as to the other fabric I bought in Alaska? Well, you'll just have to wait and see!