How to make a toddler playsuit/romper from an adult t-shirt (part 1)

Today I'm going to show you how to make THIS:

I took OODLES of pictures, so every step should be really clear, but email me if it's not!

you will need:

a shirt (I used adult small. It needs to be as long as your child from shoulder to ankle.... (or to knee if you want shorts) too big and you will have to hem/fix the collar, and the whole point of this is to use what's already done....)

some coordinating scrap t-shirt fabric (for the crotch facings)

sewing machines, clothespins, thread, etc.

Measure your baby from shoulder to mid-crotch (where a onesie would snap). add an inch to get your "body measurement"

My daughter is about 17" from shoulder to crotch...

turn your adult t-shirt inside out, and then fold it in 1/2. Measure down from the top of the neckline to the legnth of the body measurement

My daughter was 17" so I marked (with a sharpie, since this will all be covered) at 18" down from the top of the neck

at the hem, measure in about 1.5 inches, and draw a line up, curving the corner to get to your measured body length.

cut it out. (so you're cutting through 4 layers of t-shirt)

discard the U's you just cut out.

Now line up the sleeves/the top of the shirt... make sure the shoulder seams line up!

find a shirt/onesie that fits your child, fold it like the adult shirt, and lay it on top, lining up the center folds and the top of the arms.

If the shirt is a little big for your kiddo, leave it there, but if you're grabbing something that fits perfectly, or you want to make the next size up, scoot the baby shirt over and down a little, equally.

I moved mine over about 1.5" but only down about an inch, because my bean has skinny little arms!

mark the corner made by the armpit (give yourself a smidge of seam allowance... I put about .5") It's pretty easy to go back and take a little more off after you've fitted it to your child, but if you cut too much off now, you've wasted a shirt!)

Ok, go put away the baby shirt, and grab a ruler.

make a straight line from the corner mark you made to the sleeve hem. Ideally, the line would meet the sleeve hem in a 90 degree angle.

Clearly, my world is not ideal.

Now draw a line from the corner mark to the hem of the shirt, ending JUST BEFORE THE HEM. (it's not actually that dire, but it's prettier if you don't cut/sew through the hem)

so here's the serging line you made. you only need one right now.

cut off the extra, leaving a little bit more seam allowance... (this is mostly just so you can put your clips on the seam lines)

now if you unfold the shirt, you should see the basic shape of a toddler playsuit!

measure your crotch "U"

do some math (or make google do it for you) to figure out what 70% of your crotch measurement is (70% of 17 is 11.9, so , as you can see in the next photo, I rounded to 12") to get your edging measurement

cut strips 5" wide by the length of your edging measurement. You can cut strips from ribbing, although it's a bit thick, and might be difficult to put snaps through. I used regular-t-shirt-fabric scraps.

MAKE SURE YOUR FABRIC STRETCHES FROM SIDE TO SIDE, not up and down.

cut 2

Use clothespins (really, it's a knit trick that WORKS! no snagging, no breaking pins on your serger blade, and easy to remove from either side!) to clip together the sides of your playsuit (or, if you don't have enough clothespins, clip the side with the marker)

so once you have the sides all clipped together, stop and move the kitten away from the machines so you can actually serge/sew!

I use both of my machines to make these, so if I say "serge," use a serger, or zigzag and then straight stitch (or whatever floats your boat when seaming knits), whereas when I say "sew," I mean straight stitch on a regular machine...

start serging on the side with the markings, starting at the arm, curving through the armpit, and heading down to the hem of the shirt...

try to end up so that you don't actually serge through the bottom hem (because that way you're guaranteed a nice even hem)

ok, so now you have one side beautifully sergered...

turn it over so that the WR of the front is on top (serge on the left) and fold it over, so you can trace the serge line on the other side. (you want the markings to show when you start serging from the arm down)

here's a picture of the markings, just in case you don't know how to trace)

serge the second side, again, starting at the arms, going toward the hem, and try to not serge the hem, so you have a prettier hem.

turn the romper right side out, and you should have something that looks like this!

now all you need to do is the crotch! and that's in the next post!

How to make snap crotch for a toddler romper/playsuit

OK, so hopefully you've read the part about how to cut/sew the basic shape of the romper, and all that remains is to make the snap crotch (that sounds so weird!)

so, take one strip of stretchy coordinating fabric, serge the narrow ends, and line the ends up with the ends of one "U", wrong sides together. Clip the ends and the mid-points together like this:

It should seem impossible to sew, but the stretch, assuming you cut it the right way, will STRETCH (and the crotch area is not a good area for oodles of extra fabric... taut is good!).

start serging, and as soon as the fabric is caught by the needle, start stretching the fabrics so they are the same size... (you might want to practice with some scraps, you need to stretch evenly, not pull, which could mess up the timing on your machine...)

just for comparison, here's the fabric, romper on top, edging on the bottom, before I stretch it

and here it is stretched.... see how I make them match up?

Do this to both sides, and you'll have something that looks wonky like this:

Iron your seams down so that the romper is flat, and the edging is creased...

then turn down about 1/3 of the raw edge of the ribbing (just at the ends).

fold over again, so that the edging is folded in thirds, and the seam is covered on the right side of the garment. pin at the ends, and then pin in the middle....

now start stretching and pinning wherever you can (about every inch)

it should feel smooth when you stretch it taut... that way, you can iron it (with oodles of steam), and get something that looks this awesome:

isn't that pretty and flat!!??!!

now, on the right side, SEW down as close to the edge as possible (I love my blind-hem foot for this purpose, and highly recommend them!), and then again, about 1/4 from the edge (lack of a good camera meant all the pics of this were blown out and blurry, so you have to imagine how to sew a straight line along the edge ON the edging, covering the serged seam)

TADA!

now you just have to put in snaps!

Measure the front crotch, roughly in the middle of the edging piece

do math (or just guess based on how many snaps you have...) to figure out where to place the snaps (I did mine every 2.5" and really like that spacing!)

use a sharpie (or whatever) to mark your snap placement ON THE RS OF THE FRONT.

(I'm going to simplify snap parts... there's a flat side, and a functional side (the functional side is either male or female, one of each, obvi, to make a working snap), but as long as you do ALL male on one romper side, and all female on the other romper side, it doesn't seem to matter which is which)

so the RS of the front will have flat parts, and the WS of the front will have functional parts.

I find it easiest to make a hole with a yarn/tapestry needle and then push my flat piece in, but the prong snaps are sharper, and will go through more easily, I think)

when all the front snaps are in, pin the ends of the front and back together, overlapping with the front on the bottom, and (using your knee, or someone else's hands) stretch so the pieces are flat.

now mark the matching points on the RS of the back.

Put the flat snap pieces on the INSIDE (WS) of the back, and the functional pieces on the RS (outside) of the back. this way the crotch strips will overlap in the crotch, which is ideal (if this is confusing, look at some RTW snap crotch pants before you put ANY snaps in!)

TADA! put it on a kid and enjoy!

Uncle Jon's Shirt....

The Bean's godfather gave us one of his company's shirts a few years ago....

yesterday, I realized that, like the boxers I made a few months ago, a large t-shirt could easily make a suit for a small toddler...

It worked out PERFECTLY, see:

and you can still see all the logo on the back!

this would probably be even cuter on a baby boy, but I think it's pretty cute on my baby girl....
tutorial coming soon!

(more pictures of the model HERE)

Oscar's birthday present

My friend Catrine is Dutch, (like, actually born and raised in Holland). Her little boy is celebrating his 1st birthday this weekend, so here's what I've made for him:

This onesie is still drying, but I've used freezer paper to stencil the Dutch flag (I do know how to spell the word white, but the "e" is covered by the side strip of freezer paper...just FYI)

then I made a cute pair of pants, with some felted wool remnant pieces, and lined them with a mans shirt...

I used scraps of each to applique a matching tie onto a shirt.

I think my favorite part of the pants is the patch pocket on the side... I still need to sew the button on, but look:

It's from the button placket on the front of the men's dress shirt I used for the lining/waistband.

Isn't that cool?!?!

anyway, hopefully he/his parents likes the gift... I forgot to make a little gift bag, guess I still have that to do...