The best thing you can possibly do with two great sewing patterns is mash them together, right?

Today I’ve got a combination of the bodice of the Elodie Wrap Dress by Closet Core Patterns with the Winslow Culottes by Helen’s Closet.

For me sewing is a creative practice. Filled with ideas and inspiration and bringing visions to life. For this hack, however, I just saw someone else do something awesome and straight-out copied it!!! I saw the supremely talented @nana.makesstuff over on instagram wearing a playsuit made out of the Winslow culottes with Vogue 9253 just before I was heading on holidays to Greece.

And the moment I saw the gorgeous combination, I knew I wanted to make my own version.

Although I also own Vogue 9253, I decided to use the Elodie Wrap Dress as the bodice for my version as I already had it traced in the correct size and, unlike the Vogue one, it isn’t indecently immodest on my body!

Elodie Wrap Dress as Playsuit

To sew up this pattern hack, I’ve used the size 16 of both the Elodie Wrap Dress and the Winslow Culottes. My fabric is a linen and viscose blend which I purchased from Stragier Tissus.

Now, the most important thing when hacking yourself a jumpsuit is to know how you intend to get the thing on or off. My Elodie play suit needed to have a back zipper to get off an on.

Luckily, the Winslow culottes are already designed for a centre back zipper so no modifications were needed there. In addition, the Elodie Wrap Dress already has a centre back seam, so I didn’t need to modify the back piece, I simply installed the back zipper where the seam allowance would have been.

I did, however, have to make a few slight and easy modifications to the Elodie Wrap Dress to make this new closure system work. I had to split the back neck facing into two pieces and extend in length slightly to cover the zipper. I had to split the back waistband (and its facing) into two pieces and I had to create a new front waistband (and its facing) which was a simple single piece. With the latter, effectively, transforming the Elodie Wrap into an entirely faux wrap.

With those slight changes, the tope half of my playsuit hack came together very easily.

Winslow Culottes as Playsuit

I think the Winslow Culottes make a truly fabulous pattern for this kind of hacking because they are so incredibly versatile.

I started off my adding two inches to the rise of the Winslow Culottes to ensure that my bodice and culottes would meet without causing any wedgie tragedies. This turned out to be a tad too much on my body and gives a crotch which is slightly too dropped. An inch and a half would have worked fine for me.

The real flexibility of the Winslow Culottes are its lovely pleats because once you have the culottes more or less assembled, with a project like this it was really easy to play with the placement and size of the pleats in order to create something very deliberate looking.

In reality, I actually had to modify very little from the original suggested pleat placement to get the look that I wanted. I guess that’s just a sign that it was simply meant to be, as far as a pattern mash up goes!

Playsuit dilemma

While I will wear a jumpsuit until the cows come home, I’ve never worn a playsuit before. Or a romper. Why is it that we need feel the need to infantilise the names of women’s clothing?

Oh well, I guess jumpsuit with shorts doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!

Once I had put together my basic garment, I struggled a bit to decide what length to hem it at.

Part of me was envisaging this as a light, summery, out-of-my-comfort zone garment, so going for quite a short length for the legs seemed fitting.

On the other hand, the length of the sleeves of the Elodie Wrap Dress would likely look more balanced with longer length legs. The longer legs also looked, visually, more like a dress. This was a bit of a double-edged sword. yes, it would make it more versatile. But, it would also make it less of a summer fun vibe.

In the end, after pinning the legs to various lengths and traipsing around the house with different lengthed legs for a while, I basically went for something in between.

Yep, real sophisticated decision-making there.

All-in-all, this was one of those fun spontaneous projects that remind me why I love to sew. I saw a gorgeous image on instagram in the morning. And started cutting it out that evening. If that isn’t a super power, I don’t know what it!

And here it is on vacation:

If you want to see more of my sewing adventures, you can find me on Instagram here.