Last Day of Summer Beach Romper

Summer (officially) ends today in Australia. Luckily it's been a nice hot day to enjoy. My friend, Katharine, is moving back to Scotland in a few months and is trying to do as many weekend day trips as possible in the time left. She suggested a beach crawl - like a pub crawl but with sand and surf instead of alcohol - as something to see summer off. The beach is always fun so I decided to join her. It also gave me an excuse to finally get around to making this beach wrap/romper.

I've had both the pattern and fabric for years and had them paired together, but just never bothered to make it until I had a specific reason. As with the trousers on my last post, this fabric was found in a closing down shop in Benalla. The pattern is the 1930s beach romper from Decades of Style, who have a great range of 1920s-1950s reproduction vintage patterns.


The romper ties at the back of the bust with a ribbon attached to the centre front and the threaded through buttonholes on the bust wrap section. And luckily my machine's temperamental buttonhole foot worked perfectly - so much easier than hand-bound buttonholes. It also ties at the waist, and then the skort section wraps through the legs, around the front to look like a wrap skirt and also ties at the back. It looks nice once on, but I don't think there's an elegant way to put it on. Maybe that comes with practice.

Although the finished product turned out fine, I did find the instructions for this weren't written very well - it's a bit of a confusing garment. None of the pattern pieces are normal shapes, so when the instructions told me just to attach the front insets to the front, it took me a while to work out exactly where I was meant to attach them. I also frustratingly discovered a thinning and slight tear in the fabric once I'd finished making the romper, so had to get out needle and thread and darn the hole by hand.


Our beach crawl was a success, walking from Malabar to Maroubra to Coogee all in the romper, which kept me covered and kept me cool. All in all, a great way to end (official) summer.

My hair is trying to strangle me here