A Pair of Jumpsuits For a Pair of Pals!

I made another Peppermint jumpsuit! I think this one and my first one will be really great for fall as it gets a bit cooler. This rust coloured (I refuse to acknowledge that I’ve made a literal orange jumpsuit, don’t send me to jail plz) cotton linen is the other fabric I bought using the $30 giftcard to Fabricville my sister gave me for taking care of her cats. The other one was the green corduroy that became a Farrow recently. I got it during a “buy one, get two free” sale, so was able to make this jumpsuit for around $20 and still use a linen/cotton blend. I actually purchased the materials for this after the materials were purchased for the second jumpsuit you’ll see below, but I find it’s a pretty quick make if you’ve already made it once before.

(I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but my darts are a bit pointy as you can see in the photos below. I can’t tell if I just need to press it better/in a different way or if I need to change the shape of the dart sewing line. Any tips?!)

I really love this colour; I think it’s dark enough that it’s not aggressively orange, but think it’s a really striking colour to have head-to-toe! I’m hopefully going to be pairing it with my jean jacket a lot. I haven’t tried it yet, but I have a suspicion that wearing a black cardigan with it will be a bit too Halloween-y.

I made a bit of a goof when I was sewing the topsy-turvy all-in-one facing around the neckline and armholes. Surprisingly, I didn’t accidentally twist my pieces or sew the wrong things together. Nope, I had started ignoring the fine detail of the directions and was forging ahead and then realized when I went to pull the first armhole out that I’d sewn the facing with a 5/8″ seam allowance instead of 3/8″ as called for. *facepalm* Because this made the opening a good 1/2″ narrower, it was a TASK to pull the jumpsuit out. Because of course I was way too stubborn to go back and undo the seams and sew them at the right allowance. And… I’d already trimmed and clipped them, so there was NO GOING BACK. So I had a good old wrestling match at 12am with an unwieldy orange tangle of fabric. And I was victorious. The only thing was that in order to make the shoulders not look noticeably different in width, I had to make the other one a bit smaller too when I sewed the other armhole edge. Cue more wrestling (albeit slightly less strenuous). Anyway, the moral of the story is I should probably highlight the seam allowances with a fun colour in my instructions, especially if I’ve made the pattern before and might get a bit cavalier with such NOT insignificant details.

I also added pockets again, as I did before. Since I had my first version to refer to, it was much quicker. I actually almost forgot to add them until I was sewing up the side seams and realized I hadn’t cut any out. So I did a quick and dirty cut out on a quadruple layer (I live life on the edge), finished all the edges with the serger, and then sewed them on. I’m very glad I did! For reference, on my versions I lined up the top edge of the pocket with a mark I made 8-1/8″ down from the seam under the arm (making it around 8-1/2″ from the top edge of the side seam piece, if you sew this in a reasonable order instead of at the last minute).

The second jumpsuit in this post was made by my friend Chelsea with a bit of assistance from me! Chelsea has made a few items of clothing before (a couple Deer & Doe Datura blouses), but is not super experienced YET. This jumpsuit was a bit of a spontaneous project. She was hanging out with me a few weeks ago and I was wearing my first (black) jumpsuit, and she loved it and wanted to make her own. Since I had only bought the fabric for it and made it a few days prior to that, I suspected the excellent sale price that I’d gotten on it (50% off) might still be in play. We impulsively headed straight to Fabricville near my house, and it was still on sale! She chose a navy blue in the same fabric as both of my versions, with a mustard/golden colour for the waist tie. Then, we headed back to my house and printed out the PDF pattern. She taped it all together and cut out her size that night, and set the project aside until next time.

The next time we got together at her house to sew, and she cut out all the pattern pieces. I also brought my serger and finished all the edges for her, so that she’d have a quicker time once she went to sew it. We forgot to buy a zipper on the initial trip, so that stalled her solo progress a little bit. We got together yesterday and were determined to get it finished that day so that she could wear it. She had sewn the waist tie on her own, so we started with the invisible zipper. Chelsea had never sewn one before, but she used my invisible zipper foot on her sewing machine and managed it like a champ (see back photo below)! After that, aside from guidance on the whole rolling and burrito-ing and pulling and reminding about 3/8″ seam allowances, everything else went quite smoothly! We still had to play a bit of tug-o-war on the jumpsuit, but it was much more doable with two people and correct seam allowances. And voila! There’s some fit adjustments we’d probably do for next time, like maybe a full bust adjustment, but overall it’s very wearable!

It’s fun to sew with friends! Do any of you have IRL friends who also sew, or do you bond mostly with the online sewing community?

While Chelsea sewed her jumpsuit, I worked on this project I’m really excited about. My sister hand-dyed some canvas when she was in art school, and I’m using it to make her a totally one-of-a-kind Kelly Anorak. It won’t be revealed until her birthday in mid-September, but I’m LOVING it so far! She’s going to write about her dye-ing process so that you can get the full scoop on the whole project, start to finish.