Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Sweet Summer Dress


My honorary niece, Olivia, is due to turn two in May. This great occasion requires a present, and I decided to make her a summer dress. It wasn't hard to think of a suitable pattern.





I've made this Child's Pinafore pattern, which appeared in Vogue Knitting's Spring/Summer 1990 issue, twice before. It's a charming design and it's a quick knit because the empire-waisted bodice is so small.





This is one of my previous efforts, which I made for my grandniece Cauliflower's third birthday back in 2012. I don't have a photo of the one I made for my niece Peaches back in 1999 or thereabouts.





This is the one I made for Olivia. I had some leftover coral and green and cream cotton yarn in my stash that I thought went together very well. The cream and the coral were left over from this 2017 project. I don't know what brand the cream yarn is, but the coral is Sublime Yarns Egyptian Cotton DK in Spicy Lilly. The green was Patons Cotton DK Mercerized in Spring Leaf Green, and was left over from a green pullover that wore out years ago. I adapted the pattern in order to make it with three colours rather than six, and I thought it turned out okay, but I did rather regret not working out some other design for it as I did when I made Cauliflower's -- I preferred the look of the bodice I came up with. It was also a bit difficult to find a light fabric that would go with the bodice for Olivia's dress, as the coral and the green were tricky to match, but in the end I was pretty happy with this coral-coloured cotton print.





And of course, I had to whip up a matching purse for the dress, using the Squircle pattern that I've used a number of times before. I knitted the purse in a plain cream and added the tulip pattern using the duplicate stitch method. I've no reservations about how the purse turned out.

This project used up 120 grams of stash yarn.