Recently I was looking for inspiration on Boden’s site. They always have some cute girl clothes, and I love browsing their site for inspiration. I came across a romper that I knew would be perfect for summer play. It had a dolman style sleeve and attached shorts. Knowing the patterns that are in my pattern library, I thought the Deer Creek and the Bayside would work perfectly! I had to do some mashing of the patterns for the top to get the length and the bottom to match and line up to the bayside shorts.
After I printed my patterns, I lined up the shoulder at the neckline. I made sure to have my grain line arrows parallel to each other. For the front pattern piece, I could easily line up the fold line. I then graded my side seam from the chest of the Deer Creek pattern down to the bottom of the bayside pattern. I knew that the Deer Creek elastic hits around the natural waist, so it needed to be lengthened to get the correct length for the lower elastic. I followed the same process for the back piece, only I could only used the grain line arrow as a guide, since the back of the Bayside isn’t cut on the fold. After getting my top of the pattern pieces mashed together, I double checked the side seam length to make sure that they matched as well. I ended up lengthening the front side seam, as it didn’t match up to the back. Next, I needed to make sure that the back of the Bayside shorts, and my new back pattern piece were going to be the same width. The shorts have a center seam, and aren’t cut on the fold like the back top piece. The seam allowance is 3/8″, for a total of 3/4″ that will be removed from the back shorts. I then measured both the back top and bottom and added 1/8″ width to the top to make sure when sewn they would match perfectly.
The only other thing that I ran into that needed to be addressed was how was she going to get it off. The Boden romper has snaps/buttons at the shoulders. I really didn’t want to have to mess with the shoulders and neckline to get it correct. I ended up making a placket and adding it to the crotch to have snaps in the crotch so she could remove the romper easily for changes or restroom breaks.
I constructed the top using the Deer Creek tutorial. I sewed the shoulder and then added the neck binding. Since I didn’t adjust the neckline width, I just used the neckline binding from the Deer Creek pattern. I sewed the side seams and then hemmed the sleeves according to the tutorial. I then constructed the shorts by sewing the pockets onto the front first, using the Bayside tutorial for the instructions for the pocket construction. After I added the pockets, I sewed the front and back rise. The side seams were next. Following the side seams of the shorts, I then hemmed the bottom of the shorts. Now I could measure the crotch width to determine how wide I needed to make my placket. I made the length 2.25,” and the width was the width of the crotch plus 3/4″ for the seam allowance. I ironed in all of the sides by 3/8″, then the length was folded in half to make it 3/4″ wide for the snaps to go in. I then sewed this on with a 3/8″ seam allowance and top stitched around the placket. Finally, I added the snaps and finished sewing the shorts onto the top using the Bayside as the guide to making the casing and adding the elastic in the waist.
I just love how it turned out! It will make great play clothing for her this summer. I’m excited to make more for her, and hopefully I can update this post with some pictures for a proper tutorial on mashing these two patterns to make a fun romper. Fabric is from Raspberry Creek Fabrics.