Designing a jersey dress for my daughter

You’d think that a pattern for this kind of simple jersey dress would be easy to find. I, however, failed in my search and then decided to make my own pattern. Perhaps I am on my way to become a pattern designer!

I found this fabric at the Tampere Crafts and design fare at the booth of Paapii. This red organic jersey with white hearts had a nice pattern for Christmas but not so Christmassy that my daughter couldn’t wear it afterwards, too.

Again, I used Seamly2D to draw the dress pattern just like I did when I designed a dress for myself. This way the pattern stays in digital format and it will be easy to modify.

The top of the dress is basically an easy-fitted teeshirt. I wanted it to be loose and comfortable to wear. The hem is made out of two gathered rectangles. I have found that you can create just a perfect amount of gathers if you make the original pieces twice as large as the finished width of the gathered skirt piece. To make the waist gathers comfortable, I used a piece of clear elastic to make the gathers.

My best thank you is the fact that S likes the dress and has been wearing it throughout the holidays. I asked what she thought about it and she said it was “nice, lovely and hearty”!

Now that I have made the pattern I can size it up as she grows and never worry about not finding a pattern again!

This is all for today! Thank you for reading and happy sewing!

Katja