Am I suffering from maker’ s bias (unintentional pun!) or is this totally twee AND squee at the same time? This is the Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress.
Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress
I made this for Aislinn, my one & only niece (I have four nephews). The fact it’s so cute will hopefully make up for the fact her baptism was last weekend. Oops.
This is a downloadable pattern – I believe it is no longer in print. That’s a shame as it’s a lovely age-appropriate (ie not old-fashioned daggy) dress for little girls. This is a size 12 months-18 months. Tiny! The pattern is sized 6-12 months to 3 years and you can also download it as age 4-8. My daughters both want shirtdresses now, fortunately I won a magazine from The Perfect Nose and I have a shirtdress in the queue from that.
Unfortunately I could not find a shop that would print the large format sheet on the weekend (it provides a tiled pattern as well as a large format pattern sheet) so I tiled the pages myself. The logic of the PDF layout of Oliver + S is outstanding and putting them together was a breeze.
This itty bitty little shirtmaker dress has a Peter Pan style collar and a button placket. I had never constructed a placket before but the instructions are very clear and it was easy. Fiddly but easy.
The one thing that threw me was the 1/2 inch seam allowance – instead of 5/8 seam allowance. I chanted it to myself every time I went to the machine LOL.
I stuck to the pattern with just a few little SewBusy touches…
Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress sleeve tab
- I used press studs rather than buttons on the placket. They seemed more practical and less swallowable than buttons.
- I attached little white flower buttons on the contrast sleeve tabs and pocket flaps (with some little bits of green contrast stitching)
- Added a little lace trim to the hem, cos a gal can’t be over-trimmed.
Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress pocket
And the finishing touch? My own little label – courtesy of ELH, the Ever Lovin’ Husband. It seemed appropriate to use the first one on his god-daughter/niece’s dress.
SewBusyLizzy Label – the slip stitching is a bit messy – I was excited at this point!
It’s actually our 13th wedding anniversary tomorrow.
One of my friends once said I should blog my wedding dress. I didn’t make it but she said it’s so lovely I should share it with you. It’s fairly simple in style. What do you think? It still fits 
Pattern Review RTW Competition
The RTW Pattern Review competition voting is about to close. I’m pretty confident that I’m not going to win 
in fact I think one of my blog followers will! when I saw her dress I thought ‘yup that’s the winner!‘. That’s cool. I realised when I decided to make the dress that it wasn’t the ‘showstopper’ ‘prize winner’ type, it’s too ‘everyday’ however I wanted to create an everyday dress that I would adore wearing and that’s exactly what I did. I continue to wear my gingham 15 pound Aussie shirtdress a lot and it always receives high compliments, in fact my hairdresser complimented me. I mentioned I had made it and she laughed “I was just thinking… I should get some fabric I think I could make that“. It really is the best knock-off yet – people want to knock-off my knock-off! LOL
And back @ SewBusy Headquarters…
I’m thread-tracing my jacket pattern. Yes, it’s time-consuming and intense… but it’s relaxing & fun… yes, I’m not kidding! I don’t joke about sewing. This is serious stuff.
Burda 03/2013 jacket. A pretty wool blend.
Jump Rope Dress details
Pattern from here.
Fabric: Japanese lawn from Spotlight (Australia).
