Yup it is a DIY for converting a woman's maxi dress to a jumpsuit or better called as romper. Why am I doing this? I mean cutting a maxi? Can’t I just go and buy one romper for my girl? Well I can and I already have. The reason why I am converting a maxi into a jumpsuit is the connection between my daughter and my mom. This maxi belonged to my mom. When my daughter Vidhi was to be born, my mom came to my place to assist us. She stayed for two months. Vidhi was just a month old and she used to stare her maxi all the time. She was so fascinated by it. Well you know babies that small cannot see colors. They can only see contrast. So anything with big black stripes or black pattern on it is fascinating to them. My mom left her maxi purposely for Vidhi, when she left. Vidhi is seventeen months old now and doesn’t stare it anymore. But I wanted to give some meaning to this sweet act of my mom towards my daughter. And thus the idea of a romper from the same maxi came to my mind. I wanted to name this post as “The mother daughter saga” but then it is also a DIY post. Here are the steps and I hope you like it.
Steps to make girl’s jumpsuit from a maxi
Although I used part of this maxi for few other purposes, I was still left with major portion of it intact.
Step 1
I wanted the romper to be a bit puffy around the waist area. So I measured my daughter’s height from shoulders to waist. It turned out to be 12 inches. I folded the maxi as shown below, such that the length from neckline to waist be 14 inches. I cut the maxi at this length. First I will be working on the top of the jumpsuit/romper.
Step 2
I cut out the arms from the upper portion of maxi. I liked the design of neckline and decided to keep it as it is. I did not separate the front and back from the shoulders. I measured the rib area of my daughter. It turned out to be 24 inches. So I kept the width of top to 14 inches on front and back, although 13 inches would suffice. I keep the extra one inch for errors.
I cut the sides of the top as per measurements. Now I fold in the shoulders on both sides and on front and back and stitch/glued it to get evenness. The neck line design has fabric gathered at the center. I picked two of these gathered sleeves and stitched them at the bottom of the top. You can see this gathered sleeve in the image below, along the center of the top. It looks like a column. Finally I stitched the sides of the top. Notice that I have not separated the front and back from the shoulder straps yet. We will do that later.
Step 3
Let us start with pant. As you have noticed I have a belt area around the waist of this jumpsuit. That was a design choice I made. So I cut the pant accordingly. Pick up one of the pant that fits nicely on your child. Take the wrong side out and fold it nicely as seen below. The pant has a front and back side and they both vary in measurement. So fold the pant such that the back side is up first. Put it on the fabric and trace out the pant. Make an outer tracing, about one inches out of this original tracing. Cut out the outer tracing. We need this extra tracing for stitching. Notice that I have doubled the fabric below. So when I cut the tracing, I will get two pieces. Mark “back” on these pieces for your reference. Open the fold now and fold the front side out. Repeat the same process for front side.
Step 4
Stitch the back side and front side separately as shown below. Now make a pipe around the waist area through which you can pass a yarn later on. Do this by folding in half of the design area inwards and stitching it. It will work as a belt. Stitch the front and back sides of the pant now. I made the pipe after stitching the front and back. But it is easier to do it before.
Step 5
Join the top and pant now. It will turn out as shown below. Make two slits in the belt and pass a fabric rope or yarn through it. Be careful while joining the two as we don’t want the pipe area around the waist to get stitched as well. You can join the top and bottom first and then make a pipe around the waist with an extra piece of fabric as well. The piece should be equal in length to the whole waist area. Stitch it inwards, around the waist.
Step 6
Put the romper on your baby to get an idea of the fitting. Also we have to adjust the shoulder straps yet. After putting the romper on my daughter, I realized that I need to shorten the legs of the bottom. Also it gave me an idea of where I need to cut the shoulder straps.
Step 7
I cut the shoulder straps at the back, right where they were attached to the backside of the top. I put two buttons on the inside of the back as shown below. I made a hole on each strap at such a place that it would fit my daughter well. I did not wish to have thin stripes because I know my daughter will pull them off all the time. So I chose this mechanism. The back looks as fine as the front with this style of handling the shoulder straps.
The romper is all done and it is time to put it on Vidhi and show it off. I tied the yarn on the waist pipe, a bit up, which made her top pouf. She is a cute model for this dress but trust me it was really hard to get one pic of her in which she was still. I finally had to give her my mobile (which I don’t usually) to get some pics of her in this beautiful jumpsuit. This is a very easy DIY project and doesn’t take long to complete.
DIY project – girl’s romper/jumpsuit from a maxi