Vogue 9253 + Megan Nielsen Flint Pants = one hell of a tie front jumpsuit!!!

So, it’s time to share my final make of summer 2018.

Which I’ve managed to finish just in time that the weather has turned here. So I probably won’t be able to wear it until next summer.

Never mind, thems are the breaks…

Paper Theory Inspired Jumpsuit

I’ve been pining over terracotta (or is it rust?) coloured jumpsuits for months.

But it hadn’t actually occurred to me to try to sew one until I saw a photo of a tie front jumpsuit in linen on the instagram account of Paper Theory Patterns (@paper_theory). That one is in a much more classy and subtle black and it is just to die for!!!!

And, I thought, yesssss!!!!

That is just what I need!

I understand that Paper Theory might be putting together a tie front/wrap jumpsuit pattern for the future. Which will be brilliant, I’m sure. But, impatient little old me, after  watching the handy little video saved on @paper_theory’s Instagram Stories outlining the process of how she made her lovely jumpsuit, decided to dive into my pattern stash to see what could work to recreate my own.

Instantly.

Because, of course, I needed it now!!

Waiting was not an option (yes, yes, I know I just said that I probably won’t be able to wear it for months, but everything is clearer in hindsight!)

So, this jumpsuit is a mash-up of the bodice of Vogue 9253 and the Megan Nielsen Flint Pants, all held together by a wrap around tie front closure!

Ahhh, look what magic can be made when indie patterns and the big 4 work in harmony!

Atelier Brunette

Whilst I had my heart set on a linen tie front jumpsuit, I couldn’t source the colour I wanted locally. And I couldn’t justify another order from The Fabric Store. But, I was delighted to realise that the Atelier Brunette Stardust Series Double Gauze, featured here in Chestnut, was precisely the colour I’d been looking for. I sourced mine from the lovely ladies at Cross and Woods Crafting Parlour.

Plus, I was pretty familiar with this fabric, having just used two other colour ways to sew my Vogue 1501!

I did hesitate a little to sew in the exact same fabric I’d just used in a recent make, but, in the end, the colour won out.

Don’t ask me what has happened, but I’m just going through a thing at the moment when I desperately want to wear this orange-ish colour.  Expect to see more on the blog in the future!

Maybe almost a decade living in the Netherlands has finally caught up with me!!!

Mash-time: Vogue 9253

Since I was making an entirely new mash-up and had very little idea how it would work out, I went against my usual principles and started with a muslin.

Just this once.

The basic process involved starting with the bodice of the Vogue 9253 pattern. After all, that dress is famous for its ridiculously deep v-neck. That should make it a prime candidate for wrap around jumpsuit potential…

Starting small and simple, I removed the back seam and made the back bodice a single piece.

The front bodice required more work. After measuring the length of the waistband of the Flint Pants, I just kind of drew a curved line from the original neckline out to the point where I needed the bodice to finish, so that it would line up with the waistband. I then pinched out some fabric around the centre of that new neckline, to reduce the chance of gaping – a tip I took from the @paper_theory permanent story video I mentioned above! I also swapped the pleats in the bodice for a dart, as I thought it would work better.

The entire neckline is finished with bias binding, I had wanted to self line it for a clean finish but didn’t have enough fabric. In the end, a good thing. I am happy with how the bias binding works and two layers of double gauze would probably have just been too much!

+ Megan Nielsen Flint Pants

The bottoms are the Megan Nielsen Flint pants without much modification. My muslin showed me that even though when I wear my Flint Pants as pants they fit perfectly, in jumpsuit form I needed a little bit of extra room, so I added 2cm to the rise.

I also moved the pleat and dart locations around slightly to try to get them to match up, although the width of the waistband and ties means that this probably wasn’t so important.

The Flint Pants are the perfect pattern for a tie closure jumpsuit, due to their unique secret pocket closure feature. A match made in heaven for what I was trying to achieve with this wrap tie front jumpsuit!

Waist, tie, Waist

Getting the waistband and the ties to do what they needed to do was the part of my wrap tie front jumpsuit that did my head in.

Justa little.

Lucking having a muslin helped.

A lot.

Turns out muslins aren’t entirely evil, hey?

So there is a front waistband piece (the one attached to the front bodice piece which sits on the outside of the jumpsuit). Then, as a separate piece, so as to leave a little slit for the tie to go through in between the two waistbands, there is another waistband piece for the attached to the the back bodice and the front bodice piece which gets wrapped underneath.

I know, I know, I should have taken some process pics or drawn some diagrams. But I really wasn’t expecting this to actually work…

Then I had two separate ties which I attached to the end of the waistband on the front bodice pieces. I strongly suspect that there may have been a way to do the waistband + tie attachment much more cleanly than I did…

I’ll wait for the Paper Theory pattern to teach me!!

Jumpsuit fever

And so, my unexpected obsession with jumpsuits continues… You can check out more of my recent jumpsuit action here and here and here if you’re interested!

I am so pleased with this one though! A woven jumpsuit without a single button or zipper anywhere – that’s pretty special in my books!

And this jumpsuit is even the perfect canvas for a gold belt buckle that I picked up at an antique store in Brittany this summer. The embroidered dots on the Atelier Brunette double gauze are gold, so it’s yet another match made in heaven.

So, here she is. My tie front jumpsuit. Wrap jumpsuit. However you want to describe it. Yes, it’s a little prison uniform-y. Or pumpkin-ish! But for reasons I can’t explain this is precisely the vision I had of what I wanted to create. And nothing is better than when the creative process works out like that!

In the meantime, I am eternally grateful to Paper Theory for the inspiration for this tie front jumpsuit! I feel so inspired by the idea and, even more so, the process – the fact that I was able to get an idea in my head and make it happen! That is the magic of being a sewist!

And I really, really, really hope that Paper Theory Patterns release a wrap tie front jumpsuit, so that I can make an even better version in the future!

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.