Let's Hear It For the Boys: Baby Cyclist Romper

Cheri from I Am Momma - Hear Me Roar is hosting a great boy-centered contest:


What's it all about? Just tops for boys -- any kind of top is fair game, it just must be made between when Cheri announced the contest (about a month ago) and the link up party today. So I put mine together yesterday. :)

My brother and his wife are expecting a little boy in about 6 weeks (and if either of them are reading this, they should look away now... and the rest of you are sworn to silence). They are both cyclists. Like real clip-in-shoes and train-inside-in-the-winter cyclists (which may make your neighbors think you are housing a meth lab, apparently).

They are cyclists to the point that they love watching the races on TV and even nick-named their unborn son after one of their favorite cyclists. Thus was born the baby cyclist romper:

As part of a preliminary search to see if such a thing already existed, I saw this one on eBay and thought (as every DIYer does regularly), "I can make that. And I can make it better."

So I used one of my little guy's outgrown rompers as a pattern and got down to work. As I created my freezer paper pattern, I lengthened the sleeves a bit and then lengthened and tapered the legs of the shorts to give them more of a spandex-short look. I contemplated adding the crotch padding that cyclists find so important, but decided that a diaper would probably be sufficient padding. (I can't figure why all cyclists don't just go that route ;)

I also added the front half-zipper (partly because the zipper I purchased was too short to be a full-front zipper) and the mandarin-style collar to complete the jersey look. A million thanks to Tricia for her pattern and technique advice -- it worked like a charm, Tricia!

I made this version out of some old tshirts I had been saving to make another tshirt quilt, but I think the next version I'll try using some of the dancewear-type knit since it has more of the proper jersey "sheen" to it, as my husband says. Using the tshirts, the cost of the romper was around $1 for the zipper (on sale). Suh-weet!

And, of course, I'll print the next version with some of the proper sponsors for a budding infant cyclist: I hear that Gerber and Baby Einstein are looking for better product placement in France. And won't this little guy and his cousin be the perfect spokesbabies?

PS - Did you know that Cheri's husband is a cyclist? It makes me feel kind of like a stalker to know that, but it's fun to think that, no matter what the judges of the competition think, there is at least one other crafter who shares some cycling connection. :)

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