There is a box, in the corner of my sewing room.
It is a box whose contents have not seen the light of day for many a month.
Many crafters will be familiar with this box, in all of its forms: There’s the ever-growing
amorphous lump that lies underneath your desk…
The monster underneath your bed…
The stuff you vacuum-packed in a fit of organization and stuffed into your garage in the hopes
that you’d never have to deal with it again…
This, my friends, is the UNFINISHED SEWING PILE.
So the item that I pulled out of the Style Pile box today was…
Lol, joke, this second pile over here is the REST of the Style Pile, an extension of the
box that’s flowed out into the corner of my studio.
Anyway, the item that I pulled out of the depths of this mess is… this dress!
This dress is originally from a store called Mod Dolly from about 2012, HOWEVER I don’t
really wear short dresses right now, they’re a little bit too cutesy for me – so, I thought
that I would turn this dress into a ROMPER!
By the way, thank you to all of the people who suggested that I do this DIY!
And just so you all know I have an older video on doing exact the opposite, which is turning
a jumpsuit into a dress.
ANYWAY back to the project at hand, you need to cut your dress to the length that you want
your romper to be FIRST.
My dress didn’t need any cutting because it’s already short enough and I wanted the
romper to be about this length, but if you have a longer dress and you want to make it
in a shorter romper, then cut it to the desired length with a pair of scissors FIRST.
Next I turned my dress inside out and I laid it down flat so that the front of the dress
was facing up.
Then I folded the dress in half, down the middle of the front, like this, making sure
that that side seams of the dress matched up here, and that THIS fold was EXACTLY at
the centre front of the dress.
Next, I put pins into the centre-front fold to make sure all 4 layers of fabric - the
front and the back of the dress - were going to stay in the same place.
Then, I drew a little curved line like this onto the inside of the fabric, that was about
1 and a half inches high and ¾ of an inch wide,
and then I cut on this line through all 4 layers of fabric.
Then I unfolded the dress and I ended up with this.
The next thing I did was to simply sew along this new “crotch” part like this.
I used a straight stitch and I sewed along the seam twice for extra reinforcement around
the crotch.
I finished off the seam by clipping the raw edge with a pair of pinking shears to prevent
fraying, you could also serge this seam to finish it off neatly OR you can just leave
it as it is.
Now, this is the basic romper DONE but you’ll notice that if you leave it here, and depending
on the fabric and width of your original skirt, you’ll probably get a lot of “bunching”
at the crotch area… which doesn’t look so good.
SO, to get rid of that, I folded my new romper back into this position.
Then, I grabbed a pair of slightly loose-fitting shorts that I already owned, and I folded
them in half the same way I did for the dress, so that they looked like this.
I then placed the shorts on top of the romper, matching up the crotch seams.
You can see that the front panel of the pair of shorts goes inwards like this, which reduces
the “crotchal-bulk” (that’s not a term) – anyway I traced this shape onto my own
romper using a fabric pen. The pen is kinda hard to see on the video but the line is HERE.
Next, I pulled the back of the romper away from the front – because I only want to
sew through 2 layers of fabric here, through the FRONT of the romper only.
And then, I sewed straight up this line using a straight stitch.
To finish this seam off, and get rid of that extra fabric at the crotch, I cut away the
excess fabric from the seam using some pinking shears so that the fabric wouldn’t fray.
Now, you’ll also notice that when I placed the shorts onto the romper, the bottoms of
the shorts curved upwards away from the crotch like this.
So if you don’t do this next step, your romper’s shorts will curve down from the
crotch like this.
What I want to do is make the legholes more “straight” across my legs. So to do this,
I traced around the bottom of the pair of shorts, adding about 1 inch hemming allowance,
and then I cut along this line through ALL 4 layers of fabric – so through both the
front and the back of the romper.
I unfolded this and then I serged around the bottom of both leg holes – this step is
optional, it just stops fraying, you can also cut it with pinking shears – and then, with
the romper still inside-out, I made a hem around the leg holes by folding the fabric
up, about a half an inch, like this, and sewing all the way around the leg.
AND….
This is my finished romper!
[Music plays]
It worked out so well and it looks fantastic – I love it!
Here are the before and the afters!
NOW, before I go, it’s worth mentioning that you can only use this method on a dress
that you can pull up over your hips and waist – so on a dress that has a zipper or buttons
or a tie-up front like mine.
But next episode, I’ll be showing you how you can use this method on a dress that you
pull on over your head, so... a dress without zippers [or other ways to get it on].
I hope you guys are having a great week, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you all next
time. Bye!
Thank to all of my supporters on Patreon for making these videos possible! To become my
Patreon supporter, go to patreon.com/annikavictoria.