I'm back! It's been a pretty unpleasant time, but doing Me Made May these past couple of weeks has invigorated me somewhat and I've been able to make things again. I was intending to come back with a Big Project, but I need a bit more time to write that up, so here's an unplanned palate cleanser instead:
This is the Paper Theory Zadie jumpsuit, which literally everybody has made already and so it doesn't really require a review. But I'm going to do it anyway because this is my blog and I can do what I want.
I actually wasn't that convinced by the sample garments the first time I looked at the pattern. The fit looked - not really bad, but not the way I prefer to wear my clothes. I was quite resolute in not making it until a couple of months ago, when half the people I follow on Instagram suddenly all posted amazing versions and I decided what the hell, I was going to go for it it too. My initial thought was "ooh, maybe this is the pattern for my raspberry red linen from Mood" but I wasn't just going to cut into that for an untested pattern, regardless of how little fitting it claimed to require, so I picked this viscose up from Walthamstow for a trial.
There is a lot of ease in the finished pattern, and bearing in mind my thoughts on the product photos I decided to size down (16 top, 18 hips) for mine. It's still super comfy and has plenty of room, but it's not as oversized as I think is intended. For me, I like this fit a lot better. I took about a centimetre off the length of the bodice as my waist is super short, and that's worked well. The jumpsuit is meant to be cropped but I'm really not sure about that length on me, so I added as much as I could to the legs, which was maybe a couple of inches; the layout is SUPER efficient and there was barely any space at all to add length. While I very much appreciate the lack of fabric wastage, I also hate single layer cutting - we have a very long, thin kitchen floor which allows me exactly the right amount of space to cut fabric on the fold, but for this I was shifting things all over the place and it made it much harder to see how much space I was going to have. That's not a complaint about the pattern, just the reality of choosing to live in London. Sigh. I pieced some cuffs together out of the few scraps remaining at the end so that I didn't have to hem any of the length away.
Construction was incredibly simple. I French seamed all of the insides apart from the bodice seam with the hole in it and the front crotch seam, since the bias binding starts and ends there. Making the bias binding was the only really fiddly bit of the whole process; if you have a bias tape maker it's probably fine, but since I do not, I used my hair straighteners instead. I do NOT have the dexterity to do pressing that small and precise with a regular iron (I've tried, I burned my fingers), so hair straighteners it is. I picked up that tip from a "what's your bad sewing habit" post full of women going "tee hee sometimes I only turn my jersey hems up ONCE, what a naughty naughty sewist I am" and decided that it was genius. It makes small fiddly bits so much easier to handle and if it's wrong I don't care to hear about it, frankly.
This is astonishingly comfortable to wear. It's completely non-restrictive but allows me to have a waist at the same time, which is perfect. I will almost certainly make another couple over the summer. I really want to use my Mood linen for one of these, but I'm a little bit worried about fabric requirements as I only have two and a half yards and I'm really not sure about making a cropped leg. I'll experiment a bit with the layout and see what I can come up with!
Fabric: Printed viscose from Walthamstow Market
Cost: £7
Pattern details: Wrap-front jumpsuit with cropped legs, big pockets and bias bound neckline made from self fabric
Size: 16 bodice, 18 hips
Alterations: Added length to legs, reduced length of bodice
Would make again/would recommend: Yes/Yes
Up next: I actually made the coat I wasn't sure I'd be able to do! It's purple!
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