I’ve been dreaming of this look for months now and I knew the celebration of Hey June June was the perfect push to actually make this dream a reality! Big thanks to the lovely hosts {Loni of Havin’ Sew Much Fun, Audrey of Skirt Fixation, Emily of Replicate Then Deviate, and Jen of Maker Heart} of this month-long celebration and for including me in the stellar line up of IG and Sewing Bloggers. Not sure what Hey June June is?? Check out the initial post here. Not sure what Hey June is?!?! First of all, you’ve been totally missing out!!! Head to the shop and start oohing and ahhhing for the pattern goodness of Hey June Handmade.

I love a good pinterest inspired sew, and this one was created by mashing these two pins here and here. Shout out to the #SewRTWStyle sewists out there!!!!

Kendrick Overalls

If you missed my first attempt at the Kendrick Overalls, hop here to see what I sewed up and my first Hey June love! The Kendrick Overalls are a super modern and trendy take on a classic jumper or pant overall look. I love the front straps and the feminine look. I adore the wide leg of the pants option and in denim it’s seriously such a great outfit!!!

The pattern includes options for a skirted bottom or the pants bottom. I have goals to sew the pants without the straps because the fit is just MONEY!!!! I love love love them!

Want more Kendrick inspiration? Check the hashtag on IG and prepared to be AMAZED.

Modifying for Knit

I’ve got quite a few questions and requests for more info from my Instagram posts last week so I wanted to write up a quick blog post to detail exactly how I constructed the Kendrick overalls in knit. Not a ton of changes, but a few that made this into a new style!

• The Straps: I kept the front straps as the original pattern was, except that I elongated the straps from the shoulder to the back as on skinny rectangle. I crossed the straps at the back center of the waistband. The straps are sandwiched between the waistband main and lining for a clean finish. When I made my first pair of Kendricks I really struggled with the straps staying in place. I knew this knit would make it easy to get the overalls on just fine!

• The waistband: I omitted the zipper (of course) and created one front and one back waistband. I started by using the right waistband, cut on the fold but ended up taking some width out.

• The skirt: If I was smart, I would have just used the skirt that came with the pattern. But I’m not always smart…especially when I’m in the zone and just chugging along. I cut the skirt the width of the waistband (originally cut waistband before taking width out). The front skirt was too wide so I took some width off of that. The back skirt was too wide at the waist but I need the ease across my hips/seat so I left it as is and just stretched the back waistband to fit the skirt piece. Again, if I had used the actually skirt pattern pieces and pleated the back skirt, I might have been more pleased with the result! I did add slash pockets instead of the scoop pockets to be more like the Pin-spiration.

• The finished look: I really wanted the overalls to be completely knit with no closures or need for elastic but I found my body shape (Baby Got Back is always playing in my head….) just didn’t allow for that clean finish I was aiming for. I added elastic into the waistband to help keep the overalls from gaping in the back and showing a peek of my undies if you were standing next to me. That was always an issue with my old school denim overalls back in the day, but I’m just not willing to chance a wardrobe malfunction at this age HA! I hope to try this again, with perhaps a tighter back waistband and more curvy back skirt piece or just go for the darts like in the pattern. That’s what I get for trying to make rectangles fit these curves, right???

---

Moral of this long story- sometimes you win a pattern hack, sometimes its a near miss…but the great thing is that a lot is learned along the way!