Trying To Turn A T-shirt Into A Baby Romper

I've actually had this project on my radar for a while now. When I first found it Blue was too big for me to turn any of my t-shirts into rompers for him, so I put it on the back burner for baby #2. And well by the time we had Lion and life had settled in, we were well into football season and I'm too superstitious to switch game day shirts mid season. Plus at that time, I still was too nervous to use my sewing machine.

So I put it off again. And then while I was looking at projects for this blog I stumbled upon it again. I knew I wanted to try it, but I just didn't know to use to make it. Luckily my friend Megsy got pregnant and I just happened to have a spare Michigan State shirt laying around (I'm an Ohio State fan, so its a very long story why I have a Michigan State shirt at all). So I put two and two together and decided that this would be something nice to make for her and her baby.

The Project

Turn A T-Shirt into a Baby Romper

Instructions from Feather's Flight

Results

The bad part is that by the time I decided to turn my Michigan State shirt into a baby romper, I had already cut the top to turn it into a reusable shopping baga. Which thankfully didn't effect the construction of the romper too much and luckily I was able to get all the pattern pieces I needed.

(Though it would have been nice to have the collar to use for the neck of my romper.)

The main problem I had was trying to fit the pattern on my t-shirt so that I was able to fit all of Michigan across. I eventually shifted the pattern up so that part B and part C were at the top of my shirt and then flipped part A around to the bottom of my shirt. (So I guess not having a collar came in handy after all!). And then I just sewed the top of my romper to the bottom. 

After that it was all smooth sailing cutting out pattern pieces. (Other than the fact that I forgot to cut out 3 of the U shaped ones, but I quickly fixed that.)

So next was finally time to put it all together. Which was going to be fine, or at least that's what I kept telling myself. I had no problem sewing the front part to the back part. And then it came to putting on the sleeves, I somehow misaligned one sleeve and when I went to sew it together, only half stayed on. So in a fit of fury, I ripped it and thought I could go with out sleeves. (Big mistake I would figure out later)

So I pressed on to finish the now sleeveless romper. And I was doing just fine (and I was actually making a romper!), until I was putting in the between the legs connecter part. I forgot to read that after you connect the two u pieces to flip them inside out. (Which would have been fine... given it a true upcycled look). More importantly I lined my gusset up wrong, so the connecter part is messed up.

All of this would have been okay, had I not zig zag stitched both pieces into place and then used a straight stitch to secure them into place. So by the time I realized my mistake and tried to take it apart to fix, I realized the only way to fix it was start cutting it apart.

And then I realized how silly it looked without sleeves. So I decided to try to put in sleeves. (Because why not?) Luckily I was able to rip the sides out a little bit so sewing the sleeves on wasn't nearly impossible as it could have been. (Believe me I tried to pin the sleeves on without ripping the sides and that was impossible)

I however had the same problems with the sleeves again.

So that's when I decided to take a break from this project. 

Here's how it looks to date.

I however refuse to let this go down as a fail. (I think its the perfectionist in me) And I've got a few ideas about what I can do to fix it.

But for now its just going to haunt me!