This year, MeMadeMay for me is all about refashioning and revisiting old garments to give them a new life. 

Life had other plans for me this week. My working life has picked up over the past few weeks and on top of that, I spent two days in self-isolation after getting tested for COVID-19 as a precaution. When I finished work for the day in self-isolation, instead of diving into my making practice, all I wanted to do was veg out and watch TV. It was just where I was at. 

Because of the madness, for the second week of my ReMade May challenge, I wanted a quick project I could work on over the long weekend.  

Enter: my old Peppermint Jumpsuit by In The Folds.

This jumpsuit was my outfit for my mom’s graduation ceremony a year ago. Originally, I planned on cutting it up for refashioning into a pair of pants. I had my eye on a new pattern and have been desperately needing to fill the pant-shaped gap in my wardrobe. The jumpsuit seemed like the perfect garment to cut into for these pants. After assembling the pattern, I realized I didn’t have enough fabric in the jumpsuit itself for the pants I wanted to sew. After trying on the jumpsuit for the first time in a long time, and a phone call with my mom who felt like the jumpsuit was a part of her because of its role in her big day, I realized I wanted to keep it and modify it to make it more my style. 

The first thing I did to modify it was to shorten it. Originally, the hem of the legs came down to the tops of my feet. This, combined with the wide-leg style, felt a bit too power-suit for me. Shortening the length of the legs helped to make it feel more modern and more care-free for my summer wardrobe. The fabric I used for this garment is a really drapey linen and it was difficult to try and mark an accurate new hem on the legs while I had the garment on. Instead, I rolled up the pant legs, using the hem as my measurement. I then measured the hem after I took off he jumpsuit and multiplied that by the number of times I rolled the hem to find the amount I needed to shorten by. It wasn’t an exact science but it worked out just fine.

The other modification I made was to add pockets! In the day or so that I kept trying my jumpsuit on to see how I wanted to modify it, I was walking around the house between my bedroom and my big mirror with my cell phone in hand and was so annoyed that I had nowhere to tuck my phone. To add pockets, I used a simple square pocket template from a pattern from Helen’s Closet and sewed them to the front. To decide on pocket placement, I put the jumpsuit on and pinned the first pocket where I wanted it to go. I then measured the distance from the pinned pocket corners to the middle seam so that I could mirror the placement on the other side. 

After making the modifications, this garment feels so much more at home in my wardrobe. I have a feeling that I will be half-living in this jumpsuit all summer. 

So far in my ReMade May challenge, I have had the opportunity to practice skills that I haven’t used on projects in a while and make more creative choices outside of what the pattern calls for. It’s a bit of a weird feeling to add something or change something on my own when I’m so used to following pattern instructions. For example, when deciding if and where to add pockets to my Peppermint Jumpsuit, I had full reign. It’s liberating, and sometimes intimidating, to start to make these decisions for yourself once you start going outside of what the pattern says. I think I’m finally at the point in my sewing journey where I feel comfortable enough in my skills and understanding to take some of those leaps.