The Ultimate Overalls: The Partner Overalls Expansion
Today I get to share a make that took a lot of mental work. For the longest time I’ve been wanting to make overalls decked out with all the hardware. I finally took the plunge and found myself in a great mental state to tackle it. I feel like sewing is a big mental mind game. You have to be in the mood to make certain things. Overalls is totally one of those things.
The overalls pattern I am obsessed with is the partner overalls from Ready to sew. I absolutely love the fit and the details so now I just want to make so many overalls but there is one thing that limits how many I will do. One word: Topstitching! There’s a lot of topstitching in this. So much so that at one point it was sewing a seam and then topstitching and then repeating it again. Now don’t get me wrong I love the effect and the feel. The achieve the crisp topstitching on my machine is a work in progress due to tension issues, but I’ve gotten it to a point where it’s not that bad. For anyone else using a Pfaff Ambition 620 I adjust my tension to 3.4 and my stitch length to 3.5. It’s working so far but pulls in the back every now and then, which is the part that drives me bonkers. Another helpful tip is don’t backstitch. I don’t remember where I read that but thank you to that person. But that also adds extra work with tying knots after each round of topstitching.
Now that I’ve talked your ear off with topstitching I can tell you about the rest of the overalls. It comes together really well. Instructions are great and there was no confusion. However, I did buy the expansion pack so it was a little confusing to get all the correct pattern pieces traced up. There’s some pieces that are labeled with the same letter but with an extra apostrophe. Oh and there was one other spot I was confused about but that was on me. It was part of the pockets. There’s one piece that says to cut it out in shell fabric. I didn’t know what that meant and of course it meant the main fabric and not lining which is not what I did originally. Funny story though, that section didn’t click till like midnight that night for me and I was in bed so I walked down and fixed it while my hubby ate cereal behind me. We’re not usually that chaotic but we were that day haha.
That said, the sew up was enjoyable. I went slow and I made this over the space of a week. It did take me another week to get the hardware in since I was sent the wrong grommets originally. So two weeks total, which isn’t too bad. I’m working on sewing slower which has been lovely. Oh and before I forget, let’s talk fabric. The two fabrics are from Rifle Paper Co for Ruby Star Society on their cotton canvas. The fabric name is Poppy Fields and I used the cream and black colourways.
Overall, this is probably the best make I’ve made. I can’t do any better but I can sure try! I hope you love it too!
