Pirate Dress: Plus, that myfabrics.co.uk discount code again!

All together now, 'A band of naughty pirates stole some jewels from me...' etc. As predictably obsessed with princesses, ballerinas and fairies as Dolores currently is, she is also equally into pirates (and the CBeebies programme 'Swashbuckle' by association). So when I found this pirate printed jersey on the myfabrics.co.uk site that actually featured a girl pirate in the design (can you believe?!) I knew it had to be in my selection.

Pattern: 

As with my first make using myfabrics.co.uk knit, my first port of call was my small but trusty stash of Ottobre Design magazines. They always have lots of knit options in each issue so they're great for finding something a bit different to a basic T-shirt or leggings pattern.    

For this project, I thought it'd be fun to interpret a potentially stereotypically 'masculine' fabric into a dress. This is the Circus Horse dress pattern from the Autumn 4/2013 issue of Ottobre. It looks super comfy, with long raglan sleeves, gently gathered cuffs, a drop waist and gathered skirt. For me, it also had the benefit of being a pattern that I'd already traced out the pieces for as I've already made a garment from it just over a year ago. It's hilarious to see those pics where I made a tiny not-yet-two-year-old model a dress that still looks a bit big on her a year later! Despite that Paris fabric version still being big (I combined the size 92 width with size 98 length), Dolores loves it and requests to wear it all the time, so I hoped I was on to another winner with a pirate version. 

Fabric:

This is my second choice of free fabric kindly offered to me by myfabrics.co.uk in exchange for writing an honest review about it. It is a medium weight single jersey knit with the same soft handle of the lightning flash fabric. I received 80cm from which I could comfortably cut this dress, plus there's enough left for either some cute accents on another garment or a couple of baby dribble bibs or something.

I decided to break up the onslaught of pirates with some solid red jersey sleeves (using leftovers from my maternity leggings), plus I was feeling lazy so decided to bind the neckline and wrist edges with some fold over elastic from my stash rather than making and applying knit bindings. This meant that I could skip the step that suggested gathering the bottom edge of the sleeves with clear elastic before stitching on the wrist bindings: with the FOE I could gather and bind in one single step. 

Thoughts and discount code:

A real success! BTW, my current definition of 'success' in this context is a garment that Dolores will just agree to put on, without weeks of having to cunningly 'offer it up' in a limited selection of garment options every morning until she finally bites. It's very tempting to sew A LOT of these dresses, as she can move and play in them without restriction whilst simultaneously not needing to scream 'I WANT TO WEAR A DRESS, MUMMY!' when she looks down and finds out I've duped her into jeans and a T-shirt. I'd like to make a crazy patchwork one that uses a mix of print and solid knits for all the different pieces of the garment.

As for the knit, at £14.40 it's not the cheapest fabric out there on the internet, but I can genuinely say that it IS excellent quality that seems to be very comfortable to wear and washes brilliantly. If you've got small people to sew for, this would be ideal as a small length can go a long way, especially if you can combine it with other solid pieces from your stash. 

If you are tempted to buy some of this knit, or anything else from their website, don't forget that you can the code SoZo16 during the checkout process to receive £10 off your myfabrics.co.uk order (minimum order £60). The fine print is that the code can only be once per order, and once per customer, and not in combination with other vouchers. It is valid until 30/09/2016, but I'll be reminding you of this voucher code once more time before the end date.