It's [not] a dress

One day a few weeks ago while thinking absent-mindedly about upcoming birthdays and was totally stumped as to what to get for a friend's daughter. I um-ed and ah-ed for a bit and then decided to make a nice little dress from a pattern I saw a while ago. I couldn't remember where it ws from, so I Googled it and found this one which looked almost identical. Now that I come to write this I cannot for the life of me locate a link. Gah! Anyhoo, it looked easy enough and half of it was crochet - how could I fail?

About a year ago I purchased a beautiful piece of Liberty fabric that had been reduced (massive win as it's usually approx. £21 per metre - yikes!) I decided to use that for this project. The button I gleaned from my hoard of spares and odds and another win was not needing to buy the cotton yarn for the trim as that had been making friends with my stash for about three years now! I once had grand designs for a Totoro hat, but  (considering the love/hate relationship I have with knitting) that's best left alone. Especially as Isaac is now far too big for the pattern sizings!

I digress...I do that a lot...back to the "dress".

The fabric part didn't take very long, but the measurements seem to concur with the finished item being far too restrictive to be a little girl's summer dress unless she wanted to stand around looking pretty rather than running around which is what every little girl I know does! Weird. I even added six more inches to the width to allow for more ruching!

So, I chopped a bit off, re-hemmed and made it a top instead; hopefully she'll be able to walk in this version!

I gave it to her today and await the verdict from my friend to see if fits her lovely little daughter. Fingers crossed eh?

Happy birthday L!

Update 12.06.06 - it fits!