Tiny sundresses
I confess: I finished up my Last Sundress, and what did I do?
Turned around and made two more.
At least these ones aren’t for me—they’re for my little nieces. And they give me a chance to use some of the really insanely cute vintage kids’ patterns I’ve picked up, that my kids are just not going to go for.
Style 2304
Let’s start with Style 2304, which is intended for my younger niece. Is that not the epitome of 70s-kid-cute?
So I was a little worried about starting with a regular size 4 pattern; this is the Waif we’re talking about, who is four but probably still newborn in width. I decided, upon cutting it out, that it was way too wide, and shaved a couple of inches off by adding a pleat at CF and taking a bit off at the back. Because the yoke was now narrower, I narrowed the straps by a similar amount. So the look is a bit different—longer relative to its width, and more delicate—than I think I was really going for. And I didn’t want to shorten the length because I know my stylish sister-in-law doesn’t really like how short a lot of the vintage kids patterns are, but combined with the narrowed-ness and the ruffles, I kinda feel like it looks a bit more little-house-on-the-prairie than I had intended. Not quite my favourite look. I suppose I can always shorten it later if desired.
Buttons
I went with buttons in the back. I had three not-exactly-matching red buttons fished out from the random button stash, but when I went to stitch them on the plastic between the the holes of one was, ah, missing. Meaning the thread fell straight through. Not exactly a useful button to hold on to, button stasher. So now I’m a button short; I’ll have to go through and see what else I can come up with.
I must admit, I kind of broke my brain adding the piping and the little ruffle sleevelets on this one. In the end I resorted to finishing the inside of the armscye by hand.
I like that the amount of gathering under the yoke is really minimal (even with me lopping a couple of inches off the yoke and leaving the skirt piece the same.).
And I think that is about as much as I have to say about that dress. Under the fine old academic principle of the Minimum Publishable Unit, I’ll tell you about the even-cuter Simplicity 1149… next time!
Tanit-Isis Sews 