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Simplicity 8333 - quick knit romper

You know how it is when you are just about to leave for a vacation and suddenly decide you absolutely need a swimsuit cover up? You start hunting you stash for suitable fabric and patterns to see what you can whip up while your husband watches your craziness and prays you don't ask for his opinion.

That frantic search led me to make Simplicity 8333 to wear over my swimsuit for our recent vacation to Costa Rica! and yes, I did ask my husband's opinion, to his dismay. 😃

I decided to make view B (romper) with the shorter sleeves seen in view C. 


Unfortunately, the options for fabric in my stash were somewhat limited (clearly, I need to do some shopping) but I went with the best option and chose a plumb cotton knit. I have no idea where or when I purchased this fabric but I seem to recall I had it in mind for a maxi skirt originally, which meant I had the needed yardage. I also felt I could wear this as a casual outfit also in the summer since it wasn't sheer, like many cover-ups are.

Alterations
Since I only had a few days to put this together, there wasn't time for any errors or a muslin. Generally, I find rompers/jumpsuit challenging to fit and RTW rompers/jumpsuits are a disaster for me. The shorts on the rompers are always way too short (don't I sound like an old lady?) and there isn't enough room for the derriere so they have terrible up the bum problem.

On this outfit, I made what are my "standard alterations" including:

  • Grading below the bust to a 20 waist/hip. On this garment, I made the bodice-pants join point meet at size 18 and then go out to 20 for the hip.
  • For the shorts, I extended front and back crotch length. The front I only increased about an inch and I did this by adding an inch at the top waist. The rear, I added two inches to the top waist join point, slopping the sides of the pieces so they'll meet the front appropriately and I extended at the center seam a little more, I think it was another inch.
I made a simplicity jumpsuit (my Simplicity 1355 review is here) a while back which helped to inform my alterations.

After I assembled the bodice, and had basted it along the bottom, I tried on the top. At this point, the front pieces were flopping out something terrible! I removed the basting stitches and pinned it on my dress form, pulling the front pieces down to overlap more, so they'd flop out as little as possible. In the photo to the right, you can see where it is pinned, I've overlapped it more than it should be so the bottom is no longer even all the way across.

Looking at the sample from the front envelope, it looks like it has been tacked down (see area circled in red in photo at right). However, the directions do not say to do this and if it was done, I'm not sure there would be enough space to take the garment on and off easily. I might add a small snap to the cross-over.

Outcome
Overall, this outfit came together very quickly and easily. I could see myself making more of the variations in the future, maybe the dress version. Though I will have to explore how to keep the bodice cross over from dropping. It came together quickly (I mostly serged it), it has pockets and it looked pretty cute. The fit was also good, with just my normal alterations.

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