Jumpsuits for L

My daughter has been growing again - I could tell the other day when I realised that the long pants she was wearing were about 2" above her ankle.... For the last couple of years I've been buying most of the kids clothes but this year I just didn't want to go out shopping ....you know....Covid.... and I hate buying clothes online so it's back to making clothes. J and I have made a few pairs of shorts for him already but they're not really blog worthy - but now it was Ls turn. Together L and I raided my fabric stash and found a couple of pieces of fabric that she liked.  The first was a piece of scuba fabric in an orange and black geometric print.  L actually chose this fabric a couple of years ago  - I was going to make her a jumpsuit out of it.  She still likes the fabric and decided that she still liked the idea of a jumpsuit so we decided to go for it.  I drew a croquis for L and sketched out an idea for a jumpsuit taking into account L's preferences.  She wanted short sleeves, long pants and a high neckline.  With the high neckline I knew I would need to make an opening in the front and went for a placket that runs from the crotch area right up to the neck and then into a simple flat band around the neck.

L has grown so much that all the patterns I've drafted for her in the past would not fit anymore - and whilst she does fit into adult patterns these days, none of the patterns I have were what she wanted so I decided to do it properly from scratch.  I went back to the notes I took when I got a free preview of Suzy Furriers moulage course and used that to make a moulage of L's bodice. Lots of measurements were taken and an excel spreadsheet was made to do all my calculations - I was in heaven.  I really enjoy this part of sewing.  It all went pretty swimmingly right up till the armhole.  The arm scythe and shoulder seam were giving me a few headaches so I did it as best I could and moved on.

After drawing up my pattern I used an old sheet to make a mock-up.  I sewed up all the darts, shoulder, armhole, side and waist and put it together and tried it on.  Not too bad really.  I did have to do a bit of modifications to the shoulder and arm scythe area which I expected but that was it really.  I transferred all my modifications back to my pattern and I was ready to start on my actual pattern.

First thing I wanted to do was eliminate some of the extra darts  - 4 in the front is a bit excessive - especially for someone who is an A or B cup\. The first one to go was the arm hole dart - I rotated it into the side dart.  Next up was the shoulder - this also got rotated into the side dart.

Next step was to add ease.  I used the Dresspatternmaking.com website and the first step according to that is to add a small dart at the armscyth - I'd just removed one of those so it was pretty easy to add it back in.  I lowered the underarm point about 0.5" and took it out about 0.5" too to allow for a sleeve to be inserted.

I knew my daughter wouldn't want anything too fitted so I left the waist dart drawn in but unsewn and tapered the side seam from the new underarm point to the existing waist point.  This leaves a new bodice pattern with just a single side bust dart.

The neckline on the bodice was about where L wanted her neckline to sit so I just removed 1.5" from the existing neckline and reassigned it to the neck band pattern piece.

Down the front of the bodice I wanted a cut on placket so I extended the bodice centerline by 0.75" for the front of the placket, 1.25" for the back of the placket and an extra 0.5" turn under.

Then I just had to add 0.5" seam allowances on all the other seams.

For the back pattern piece I again ignored the waist dart to add ease, but kept the back centerline shaping.  Again I took off 1.5" for the neck band - did the same modifications to the arm scythe area and added 0.5" seam allowances on all seams.

For the sleeves I drafted a basic short sleeve from scratch - starting with the bicep measurement plus ease I wanted. Figuring out how high I wanted my sleeve cap and then using my front and back arm scythe lengths to figure out the slope of the curves and the center point of the sleeve cap leaving about 1" ease at the top of the sleeve cap.

Next to the pants.  Unfortunately I don't have a tutorial for pants sloper making that I like so I fell back on my existing patterns.  I got L to try on some of the jumpsuits I've made for myself  and whilst the top halves were no where near fitting the bottom halves weren't bad.

 Since we wanted a more tapered leg we decided to go for the Sirocco pants, but without the pleat.   I folded out the pleat then traced around the pattern, then started modifying for L's dimensions.  First off I made sure the width of the back and front bodices matched the width of the top of the pants pattern, then the hip width was modified based on L's measurement.  Finally I extended the placket pieces down the front onto the pants pattern.

And now it was time to cut out.....but here's the problem.  I bought the fabric based on the plan to sew a shorts jumpsuit for a 7 or 8 year old.  Now I wanted to make a long jumpsuit for a 12 year old.....Hmmm tetris at it's best, but you know what the 1.5 yards I had were enough - Just!  As you may have noticed there was no pattern matching or anything - I thought for a while I would have to piece the sleeves but I managed to find a small sliver of fabric just big enough.  I did however have to piece my back neck band pieces but that's OK. 

I managed to get everything cut out, then basted it together...  The top was perfect, but there were issues with the pants - there was a huge pouch on each side much lower than where her hips were, so I pinned it out, then transferred the changes to her pattern and recut my pattern pieces.  Now that I was happy with my pattern I took everything apart and put it together properly.  I wanted to add pockets and L said she wanted in seam pockets - that's lucky cause I didn't have enough fabric for any sort of visible pocket - as it is I managed to scrounge together enough fabric for the first inch or so of pocket bag, then used a plain grey cotton fabric for the rest of the pocket bag. 

All seams were serged except the darts and the waist seam.  I sewed the darts in the front bodice.  Attached the front to back at the shoulders, set in the sleeves, then sewed the side seams.

I then moved onto the pants and sewed the front crotch below the fly, the back crotch, the inseam, then sewed the pockets into the side seams and sewed up the side seams.  I sewed the bodice onto the pants leaving the seam unserged.  I then stitched each side of the seam allowance open so I could thread 1/4" elastic through each side of the seam.  I made sure the elastic stopped at the end of the placket and stitched the ends in place. 

I added interfacing to the front band, turned under the first 0.5"  then turned the placket under again and top stitched it in place stitching the two plackets over each other at the lower end.  Next up the neck band.  Again I interfaced one layer of neckband, sewed all pieces together and then sewed the outer edge onto the to of the bodice.  The inner layer I hand stitched in place.  Finally I added black star shaped snaps down the front, placing one right on the neckband, one at the bust line, one at the waistline and spreading the others out between.

Thankfully after all the work L loves it - so much so that she asked for a second one.  So when I finally got to the fabric store I bought her some more fabric and made a second one!

As you can see - L has definitely got my taste for garish prints.  Who wouldn't want a blue and green animal print full length jumpsuit!

 I made no changes to the pattern, but again I did no pattern matching.  I bought 3 yards of the material thinking that would be more than enough - but the fabric actually had a panel down each side in a black and white print which L didn't like so we had to avoid that.  So once again I had to do some tetris to get the pattern to fit on the fabric.

This time we went for green circular snaps down the front and I got them spaced a bit more evenly.

I didn't particularly like threading the 1/4"elastic through the waistband the first time, so this time around I actually made a separate casing on the inside and used 2/4"elastic.

I'm really pleased with how these came out and so is L.  I love having a proper moulage for L and hopefully I'll have a chance to use it for something else before she grows again, but at least now I know basically what I'm doing - hopefully next time will be easier.