Field Trip Dress

Before too much time elapses, I want to blog about the jersey dress I made during the KCW challenge last month. After the time consuming Hopscotch skirt project, I wanted a speedy project to balance things out and make the week a victorious one!

(image source)

Pattern:

I got the idea from the image above that I found on Marina - Big Sewing Box's awesome kids clothes Pinterest board. The caption read 'Inspiration for dress from Field Trip raglan tee pattern', and I remembered that I have the size 12-18 months of that Oliver + S pattern (pictured below) traced out from when I taught it as a class at the Village Haberdashery earlier this year. 

I cut the main pattern pieces for the t-shirt and added a simple skirt section. To do that I cut a rectangle of fabric, stitched it along one side to form a loop, then attached it to the hem of the t-shirt with little pleats, eyeballing them to make them as even as possible. I made the rectangle as large as I could with the fabric I had left after cutting the body of the dress, so that dictated how full the skirt ended up being. 

Aside from adding the skirt, the one other change I made to the pattern was to cut the neck hole 1cm wider all the way round. I don't think Dolores has got a particularly big head, but I wanted to err on the side of caution as she hates having garments that are a bit tight pulled over her head. 

Fabric:

I was lucky to have been given both the blue polka dot jersey and the cute farm print jersey by Jenna, in her generous haul of children's sewing stuff. They were too awesome to be left to sit in Le Stash for eons, so I'm pleased that both got used with very little but the teensiest scraps left over. They are great quality jersey (you'll have to ask her for the original source) and were a pleasure to sew with.  

Thoughts:

I'm really pleased with how this garment came together. It all seemed pretty serendipitous: seeing that image on Pinterest, realising I had her current size already traced in that pattern and finding I had just enough of these awesome jerseys to make it. This dress is currently a bit too big for her, but that is ace because it means plenty of use can be extracted from it! The idea of adding a simple gathered skirt to the bottom of basic jersey top patterns has made me look at the patterns in my copies of the kid's Ottobre magazines in a different light.

I struggled to get a modelled picture because of the murky lighting. This is the best I could manage: