Hack the Ludlow Romper into a shirt

August 10, 2021

Hack the Ludlow Romper into a shirt

I’m bringing the 90’s with my Ludlow cropped top pattern hack!

I first “saw” the potential of the Ludlow romper to be a shirt when in the midst of making the pattern and trying on the top part before attaching the pants part!

So, here it is! I made it in a crisp white cotton with large silver snaps. Wearing it with baggy jeans is just one way I’m styling it now…tomorrow, another way because it’s so very versatile!

As you probably know, The Ludlow is one of our latest patterns and is an easy fitting one piece romper that comes in two pant lengths with a button placket closure down the front, a cool standup collar, winged sleeves, side seam pockets, and a matching tie belt to cinch the waist.

For the top hack, I used a crisp white cotton, but you could use any lightweight to mediumweight wovens such as cotton lawn that is opaque, cotton poplin, denim or chambray, viscose challis, linen and linen blends.

I purchased 1 yard of fabric which was *just* enough for the top in size 6. Keep in mind how much length you plan to add to your shirt when purchasing your fabric.

You also need:

Thread to match

Lightweight fusible interfacing (I actually omitted all interfacing for my top since the fabric was pretty stiff!)

I used 3 large 1” snaps, but I may actually go back and reposition them to use 4.

How to hack it!

Because of the length that I wanted the cropped shirt, I decided to add 2 inches onto the length of both the Front and Back pattern pieces, which I’m glad I did because the length was exactly as I wanted it to be!

I first taped extra pattern paper behind the lower part of the Front and Back pattern pieces.

Then, I extended the center back foldline and center front seam straight down along the extra pattern paper where I’ll extend the hem. Then I marked 2″ down from the original pattern hem.

To make hemming easier, I mirrored the angle of the side seam on my hem extension. This allows me to have enough fabric to smoothly turn up my hem.

NOTE: if you want to extend your Ludlow into a longer shirt that goes to your hips or past your hips, you’ll want to make sure it fits comfortably around your hips. Check out this blog where I turned the Mercer top into a dress for how to!

The only other pattern piece that I needed to hack, is the Placket. To be honest, I didn’t get too technical with measuring this exactly. I simply cut the placket to be several inches longer than my front and collar combined quesstimate. I did have extra length but I was fine to trim it off later!

To finish the lower edge of the placket:

First I added my collar and finished the sleeves…so basically I saved the placket for the very last step!

Before attaching the placket, I folded up the lower shirt hem and then stitched it in place with a machine blind hem. (I use a machine hem whenever I can to avoid hand sewing!) I think with this cotton and the sporty look, I also could have topstitched the hem in place, as another machine option.

Once the hem was sewn, I attached the placket per the pattern instructions (but obviously omitting the lower placket info – because there are no pants in this hack!) I finished the lower edge, just the same as you finish the upper edge.

This whole hack took me about 3 hours to complete (sewing on the snaps takes awhile!), but it probably would have taken much less time if Owen wasn’t there to keep me company/staring at me with his big brown beautiful eyes wanting to play.