I really do adore the Cerena romper. Its sleek, chic and so comfortable. However, I noticed that my wardrobe was sorely lacking in stylish pants and the Cerena romper bottom was the ideal pants shape that I was looking for. Hence, the idea for the hack to the Cerena was born and here is what I did to convert this gorgeous romper into a versatile pair of pants.
You can do this hack with any size in the Cerena range.
You’ll need the pattern first (get the ladies XXS to 5XL here, childs newborn to 12 years here, 18 inch dolls here, or save and buy the whole bundle here).
Measure yourself (or your model), then print your size and you’re ready to start…
THE PATTERN HACKING PROCESS:
Step 1: Cut out your pattern pieces as per normal. Since I would not be making the top, I only needed the bottom front and back pieces. I decided to omit the pocket pattern piece as I wanted to have the pants lying flat as possible against my hips. I went ahead and cut out my fabric for the pants front and back.
What I did next was to cut up the pattern piece. If you would prefer to keep your pattern piece intact, you could do the following steps either on freezer paper or pattern tracing paper. If you choose to do the latter, you will first need to copy the top 4 inches of the pants pattern onto the freezer paper, keeping in mind to transfer all the markings, darts and notches over as well.
In preparation of cutting out the facing, highlight both the front and back dart. If you choose to add the pocket, don’t forget to move the pocket notch down because affixing your facing would affect the pocket placement. With the size of my facing, I would have had to move it down an inch. But you can tweak it as per your height adjustment as well.
Step 2: Taking my front dart as a measurement marker, I measured it as 3.75 inches and I drew a line horizontally across the pants front piece, making sure to keep this line parallel to the waist of the pants. Cut the facing piece out of the pants pattern piece and label it for easy reference. Take a minute to mark the centre front (CF) and side of the facing piece to avoid confusion later. (See Step 5)
Step 3: Cut out the dart and tape the two remaining facing pieces together. Here we have our front facing piece.
Step 4: Repeat the process with the bottom back pants piece. Start by marking out the dart. Here we will see that the dart extends beyond the 3¾” mark I had measured earlier. It doesn’t matter because we are going to cut it off at the 3.75 inch mark. Measure across the top of the pants piece, making a horizontal line 3.75 inches deep across the bottom back piece, again ensuring you maintain a line that is parallel to the waist of the pants. Remember to mark the side where the zipper lies and where the side seam will be. I’ve also marked the top of the facing as CB (Center Back). This will give us an indication of which way is up. (Don’t skip this, trust me.)
Step 5: Just like before, cut out the dart section and tape the remaining two pieces together. Label the back facing piece, remembering to mark your grainline, which will lie inline with the grainline of the pants piece. We are now ready to cut into our facing(lining) fabric.
I wanted to keep my pants a little formal, so I decided to omit the pockets. Here we have my pants pieces, and my facings pieces. You will need a set of front facings and a set of back facings, both cut as mirror images. I’ve used a sturdy fabric for my choice of facing, so I decided to do without interfacing. If your facing fabric could do with the extra support, do consider cutting out an extra set of front and back facings in fusible interfacing and applying it to the wrong side of the facing pieces before starting to sew.
THE SEWING PROCESS
Start sewing the pants as per the tutorial from Step 7.1 to Step 11.1. Set aside
Step 1: We will start with the front facing pieces. Placing them right sides together, sew down the centre front with the same seam allowance as per the tutorial (½”). Iron the seam open
Step 2: Grab your back facing piece and identify the side (not zipper) edge. Align the front facing with the back facing pieces at the side edge, placing them right sides together. If you did any side seam adjustment (as per the fit check in the tutorial on page 43, step 10), don’t forget to incorporate those adjustments into the facing side seam as well. I fit-checked my pants and sewed my pants side seam at ¼” instead of ½”. So I had to remember to apply that to the facing piece as well, sewing it in at ¼”. Sew both sides, making sure to reinforce the seam by backstitching. You now have one continuous facing piece. Iron the side seams open.
Step 3: This step is optional, but if you’d like, you could serge or zigzag stitch the remaining facing short edge (the one that will lie parallel to the zipper). I did so because I was concerned about threads getting caught in my zipper teeth and ruining the zipper. I’ve had a previous bad experience with this and better safe than sorry.
Step 4: Iron the bottom of the facing piece ½” up. This is to prepare us for tucking the facing piece under, after it is affixed to the waist of the pants.
Step 5: Starting with the centre front, pin the facing seam with the pants centre front seam, right sides together. Ensure that the side seams of the pants match the side seams of the facing piece as well. Pin all around. The facing piece should end ½” past the zipper. This excess will be turned under and stitched in place later. Sew the facing to the pants with a ½” seam allowance.
Step 6: Press the seam upwards towards the facing piece and understitch. This is important so that your facing fabric does not peek out. Once understitching is complete, press the facing piece down towards the wrong side of the pants fabric.
Step 7: Remember the ½” hem you ironed up earlier, it’s now time to turn it under and pin it in place. Once again, I start at the centre front of the waistband and work my way around, gently straightening out the facing piece and making sure to align the slight pivots in the facing piece with the spots where the darts lie. Pin all the way around till you end up at the invisible zipper you installed in step 9 of the Cerena tutorial. Here we are going to turn the fabric under, leaving about 2mm allowance for the zipper head to pass through.
Step 8: There are two ways you could choose to finish off the facing. The easier method would be to machine sew the zipper sides of the facings and the bottom hem of it closed. What I chose to do in this case is to hand sew it in because I wanted a seamless finish to accentuate the tailored look of the pants.
Step 9: The final step would be to affix a hook and eye to the top of your invisible zipper to further secure the top of the pants.
It’s so easy to transform the romper into pants. I would absolutely love to see what you have hacked the Cerena Romper into. Don’t forget to use the hashtag #cerenahack so everyone can find your amazing Cerena Hacks. Now excuse me while I inundate you with my pants hack pictures 🙂
