Making a romper

When you sew for your baby, the end goal is often to make them clothes. A great place to start is rompers because you don't need to faff with elastic waistbands or fastenings and you can make them from most materials. I would recommend using cotton as it passes fire safety regulations for use for children's clothing.

There is a variety of romper patterns available online, or you can draw around an existing romper (onto greaseproof/ tracing paper/ normal copier paper) leaving some room for a seam allowance. Place your pattern onto your fabric and cut a front and back (bearing in mind the direction of the print on the fabric) - the back is normally slightly higher than the front.

If you wish to line your romper, cut just the top half of another front and back in either the same fabric or a contrasting or complementary colour. 

Start sewing by hemming the bottom edge of the liner pieces only. Then placing your liner and romper pieces right side to right side, sew around the sides and top (not the bottom of the liner). Use this space to turn your pieces the right way around, poking something long such as a spoon end into the shoulder straps to ensure they maintain their shape. Do this for the front and back of the romper. 

Next, place front and back pieces right side to right side and sew along both sides to attach together. 

If you wish, also sew around the crotch to join. If you wish to place poppers in the crotch for easy nappy changing, cut, hem and sew another long strip of your fabric around the crotch of the front of the romper. Then cut, hem and sew an oval shaped piece to sew to the back crotch of the romper. For advice about poppers see my post on quick projects.

The final stem is to turn up the hems at the bottom of the romper legs and sew around the inside leg. 

When complete, your romper will have fraying edges on the inside. To avoid fraying, cut all seams with crimping shears, or fold the seams in when sewing your romper front and back edges together.

Any decoration (such as the pocket on the romper pictured, or any embellishments) should be added at the very first step before lining the romper, so that the joins can be hidden.

There you have it! Let me know how you get on if you give it a try, once you know the process they are fairly quick to make and I get lots of compliments when baby is out and about in his handmade rompers.