“Romper” – there’s a word I didn’t think I’d have much use for in my adult life, but apparently they’re a thing again, so here we are. Here’s my rendering of McCall’s pattern 7099, Misses’ Romper and Jumpsuit, View A.

Look ma, no vaginas! Don’t be shocked — that’s a reference to the fact that there were vaginas all over this fabric that I didn’t notice until I got it home, draped it around myself, and looked in the mirror. It took some careful pattern placement to keep this garment PG-rated. Look below, see what I mean??

I cut a size 6, but this is a VERY roomy pattern so I had to hack down the torso quite a bit to avoid drowning in it. I ended up taking it in one inch at each side seam, and folding the front bands in half because I felt a little too covered up at the front otherwise.

Surprisingly, the shorts part of it are less roomy than you’d expect. I actually would’ve preferred a little more room in the front crotch to give it a bit more fullness at the front…just a personal preference. As it was, I ended up letting out the side seams of the shorts from the pocket to the hem by about 1/2 an inch to add a bit of width.

These photos were shot on the first nice/warm day of Spring here in Toronto. The sunny appearance belies the fact that it was only 13 degrees and I was actually kinda freezing.

The pattern was quite easy to make…there are no zippers to install and simple gathering is probably the most challenging technique used in it.

There’s a bit of weird pattern placement on my butt there, which I didn’t notice when I was cutting, but hey, at least there are no vajay-jays. And it’s much less weird than the woman I saw today wearing a patterned dress in which a single, dark coloured “x” was placed exactly where her — let’s use a polite euphemism here — ‘functional’ part of her rear end would be. It was a very attractive dress otherwise, but it was literally an “x”! I’m betting she forgot to check the back view in the change room before she purchased.

I’m *lovin’* the pockets on this, and I’m lovin’ the fabric, which is a fantastic lightweight 4-way stretch with great drape. This is SUPER comfy. I did a slight modification on the fronts, inspired by Sew Wrong’s post on small bust adjustments to prevent gaping on wrap dresses. Of course I didn’t do it properly, seeing as I only thought of it *after* I had cut out the pieces, so although it’s a bit of a hack it still turned out alright. I’m still going to add a snap or two to secure the fronts together. If I sewed another one of these, and I just might, I would cut the shorts an inch or two longer. But maybe I’ll try the jumpsuit version next. I’ve seen a couple of versions of the jumpsuit on Pattern Review that used ponte knit or even scuba knit, but I’m having a hard time picturing how those would be drapey enough for this design. It’s designed to be quite loose fitting so I think a fabric with body and structure would be a bit awkward.

Overall I’m delighted with how this turned out, and I’m looking forward to taking it for a stroll on my vacation in Italy this summer. And good thing the elastic waistband has a lot of stretch, because I plan on doing an awful lot of eating and drinking while I’m there!