Oliver + S | Sew Busy Lizzy

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.