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.
Welcome back!
Today’s video is a sequel, of sorts, to my previous video where I turned this dress
here into a romper!
Now, the method that I showed you in episode 12 works well for any dress that has a zipper,
buttons, ties-up at the front or has some other method that allows you to pull the dress
up over your hips and waist, however, what about dresses that you pull on over your head?
The dress that I pulled out of the style pile(s) for this video was THIS dress here.
Notice how it doesn’t have a zipper up the back?
YEAH.
The reason why that’s important will be obvious very soon.
So, excited as I was by my previous "romper-fication", I also started turning this dress into a romper,
in the exact same way that I did in episode #12.
But then I hit a pretty obvious snag when I got up to the stage where I... had to put
the romper on my body.
Because there was now a couple of leg holes in the way.
Whoops.
SO, I decided that I would open up the back of the dress, to allow me to get it on, and
to make it pretty, I’d also turn this opening into a lace-up, corset back.
So next, I placed the romper front-side down like this and I sliced straight down the centre
back, using some scissors, ending at my lower back.
Then I folded each raw edge in about half an inch, tapering the fold at the bottom of
the slit, and then I sewed a straight stitch down each of these raw edges, effectively
“hemming” the sides, like this.
Next, I turned the romper inside-out, and with a fabric marker I drew small dots on
evenly up either side of the slit.
Now, I shouldn’t have made marks all the way up to the TOP of the romper, I should
have only done them up to here… we’ll see why in just a bit.
Anyway, for each of the dots that I had marked out, I poked a small hole through each one,
and then I inserted an eyelet through that hole, smooth-side on the right-side of the
fabric, rough side of the eyelet on the wrong side of the fabric.
Once all the eyelets were inserted, it looked like this!
And again, I shouldn’t have added these top few and, I promise, you’ll soon see
why.
Anyway, I then started lacing up the eyelets using a piece of ribbon, lacing them up how
you would lace up a pair of shoes.
Annnnnd…
I slowly came to the realisation that once the romper was laced up all the way, I would
still have my original problem of not being able to get it on – not unless I had help
from somebody else who was always going to lace me up into the romper each time I wanted
to wear it - which would present a little bit of a problem everytime I wanted to take
the romper off to use the bathroom.
Yeah.
So I had to re-think this whole lace-up corset situation.
Sooooo while I was lacing it up, when I got up to about the 5th or the 6th eyelet pair
from the top, I kept trying the romper on my body to see if I could still pull it on.
When I got to the 4th eyelet pair from the top, I realised that this was the furthest
that I could lace it up and still put it on.
So, I then gave the romper an open v-back by folding the top edges of the romper in,
underneath the inside of the romper’s back, like this, and then stitching over the top.
You can see that I've pinned the on the right-hand side already.
Now, because I’d already inserted eyelets, I had to hand-stitch this so that I wouldn’t
run over the eyelets with my sewing machine, which is why I wish that I hadn't inserted
eyelets all the way up to the top!
If the eyelets weren't in here, I'd be able to go over it with my sewing machine.
Anyway, we learn from our mistakes, and in the end I still had this super cute romper
with a lace-up corset back, that I think is much more interesting than the original dress
that I upcycled it from!
I hope that you enjoyed these two episodes on turning dresses into rompers - if you haven't
seen the first one already, then make sure you watch it and as always if you try this
OR any of my other tutorials then please tag them with #diyannika on Instagram, because
I love seeing what you guys come up with!
Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll see you all next time.
Bye!
Thank you to all of my supporters on Patreon for making these videos possible.
To become my patreon supporter, go to patreon.com/annikavictoria!