One of the best things about Me Made May is seeing which of their me made garments other sewists love to wear day-in and day-out. So when I saw the lovely @Chloemontrose wearing a Frisco Jumpsuit towards the end of Me Made May this year, I knew I wanted one of my own!

The square neckline together with the easy “slip on, no closures” style seemed just perfect!

The Frisco Jumpsuit caters for up to a maximum hip size of 127cm, so it is not a size inclusive pattern.

I also have to confess, that it took me more than one click to figure out where to buy the pattern! The name of the company is similar to a RTW brand and it took me a while to figure out how it is spelled. It is also similar to another sewing company – the lovely fabric store threadbare fabrics. The link on the threadbear garments on instagram leads to an error page at the time I checked and when I googled the name, no results for the actual company website appeared on the first page.

Not sure if I’m being stupid and have missed something but, let’s face it, I’m not going to go to much more effort than already outlined above to try to track down a sewing pattern. But, despite me not actually being able to find the company’s website, the Frisco Jumpsuit pattern is available for purchase on The Fold Line website, so that’s how I got my hand on it.

The Frisco Jumpsuit also includes the pattern pieces for sewing it as a top with a button down front. And, as you can see from the photos, I have also hacked it to create a dress!

My Frisco Jumpsuit and Frisco Dress

The Frischo Jumpsuit is sewn from a washed linen viscose blend from Stragier Tissus. The muslin Frisco Dress is made from a viscose print from the same store.

My Frisco Jumpsuit is a size 12. My measurements had me a 12 at the bust, 14 at the waist and between those two sizes at the hips. The size selection guidance indicates that you should use your hip size as the main guide, since you need to be able to pull it on and off and the use of elastic at the waist creates flexibility there.

This is perfectly sound advice. As I was planning on sewing a muslin, however, I decided to live dangerously and start with the size 12.

Long-time readers will know I’m not a huge fan of making muslins but a new jumpsuit is one of those occasions that may justify it. Plus, I had a plan to make the muslining more bearable. I made a muslin out of the navy print, making the pants up at a “playsuit” length to check if they fit.

Then I took off the bottom and replaced it with a simple gathered tiered skirt which I attached directly to the bodice, foregoing the waistband.

I wanted a big roomy skirt so I just used as much of the remaining fabric as I could. So my bottom tier is the max width of my fabric with the upper tier being a bit shorter.

You can see that I’m very technical in my measurements here!

In this manner, the annoying muslin became a brand new sun dress and suddenly muslin-ing doesn’t seem quite so irritating after all!

The main reason I tend to muslin jumpsuits is to make sure that they are sufficiently comfortable as I have a slightly long torso, which has left me in wedgie-ville in jumpsuit patterns before. Luckily, the Frisco Jumpsuit fit me well around the torso (although it is actually drafted for someone a 3-4cm taller than me so this additional room probably helped me in the torso).

The muslin did help me make a few adjustments to fit my body better. In minor details, I needed to adjust the position of the straps, moving them a bit further into the centre of my body and slightly shortening them.

The main thing though is that I found that the pants were definitely too small around the legs and upper thigh and definitely gave me a ‘drumstick in leggings’ feel rather than the light breeze roominess I had been imagining. So, after making my muslin, I added an extra inch into the side seam of the legs (adding this to both the front and back pieces) which makes the legs of my Frisco Jumpsuit considerably roomier than the way it would fit out of the envelope.

Even if I had used the size 14 as advised, it would still not be as roomy as this version.

The other modification I had in mind from the outset was that I wasn’t convinced by the waistband of the Frisco Jumpsuit as designed. It uses a waist tie threaded through the waistband and closed with a D-ring.

I tried it out on my Frisco Dress and didn’t really like it visually. So for the Frisco Dress, I simply cut off the waistband and made a simple self-fabric waist tie to be worn externally. My waist tie is double the size of the one in the pattern, but I should have made in three times the length as it is a bit too short.

After the muslin Frisco Dress, I decided that for my final Frisco Jumpsuit, I would forego the waist tie entirely and just place elastic into the waistband for the necessary cinching. I did this by extending the bodice piece by the length of the waistband, transforming the waistband into one continuous piece and using that waistband piece on the inside to create a channel through which to feed some wide elastic.

I’m really happy with how this worked out and the simple look it creates.

Bright lemon yellow is a statement in itself for me, I preferred to keep the details simpler.

Sewing the Frisco Jumpsuit

I must confess that there were a few little aspects of sewing the Frisco Jumpsuit which I found a little irritating.

The instructions come as a single document with the print-at-home version of the pattern, so it’s easy to accidentally print more than you need if you just want the instructions or you have to download an unnecessarily large document onto your device if you want to read the instructions electronically.

I printed the A0 version but it’s worth checking in advance because I printed an entire page I didn’t need since I didn’t want to make the top. So check what you are actually printing in advance.

I also found that the instructions jumped around a bit. I know this is a matter of personal preference, but I don’t really like it when a pattern tells you to press or prepare something and then put it aside for later. I prefer to do the necessary prep to a pattern piece just before I sew it so that my pressing remains as fresh as possible when I need to use the piece.

But the main thing that I found a bit annoying is that between the straps, the neckband and the waistband, the pattern pieces end up including a lot of similarly sized rectangles which can’t be readily distinguished from each other at a glance. In order to ensure there were no problems, I meticulously labelled my pattern pieces with their number.

Only to find that the instructions only referred to the pattern pieces by name not number. So if the instructions said “attach the waistband piece”, I would have to flip back to the inventory to verify the number of that piece. This gets particularly annoying if you’re using a phone or similar device to read the instructions. It would have been much easier if the sewing instructions had simply included the pattern piece number in brackets after naming the piece.

But please don’t get the wrong impression from any of the above griping.

The reality is that I really adore the finished products that I have ended up with. As a bit of a jumpsuit obsessive, this is one of the most fun and breezy jumpsuits I’ve ever owned. I feel ready for a beach vacation every time I put it on!

The square neckline look and nice wide straps are spot on. The legs are roomy and breezy (with my added inch here) but aren’t over the top.

I can even pee with almost the same ease as wearing a dress.

And perhaps I forgot to mention it but it has fabulous roomy slash pockets!

The Frisco Jumpsuit just screams “summer, I’m here, come and get me!”

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