Something I made last year wearing something I made last year

Last year after doing one successful dress from a published crochet project, I figured I knew enough about crochet to design my own. Well I don't plan things out, I design on the fly. I usually make my teddy-bears stitch by stitch with no chart or graph or cryptic written instructions - I let the yarn and the stitches tell me what's next. I make a bear shape out of yarn, basically, and then there's a bear. Well the same can be said about a lot of my beaded items, and life in general for that matter. I intuit my designs.

So when I finished this little cornflower blue dress out of the cheapest cotton yarn (the stuff intended for dish choths.... super soft, loose ply) I was dismayed that it didn't fit my cherished 5 month old little miss. It didn't even have a good shape for a dress. Sure the skirt was full and frilly, but the flare fell at the wrong place on her and it just was too baggy around the bodice. The colors were nice, at least. And I'd recycled buttons off an old work coverall from some of my ex-husband's old navy uniforms that I'd saved for my fabric stash ages ago (they're too dark, but the right size - they're on the back.)


I even went to the trouble to try and make little slippers to match. They didn't stay on. I'm not sure if I frogged those yet or not, but I know I intend to.









Over the winter I brought the dress out a few times to use as a layering piece. Our house has no central heat and air, and no insulation. It's a 'temp'. We are saving for a new place, and this is a house my hubby 'inherited' so it wasn't really our choice location to live, but we kind of needed to get life moving along. (He took over a relative's loan, and since this is a small town, the house has some history in his family beyond that - his grandparents were renting a room here when his mother was a baby. Of course, it wasn't the heap it is now back then.) Anyway the house gets COLD, despite a big kerosene heater and space heaters, so the cotton dress was a good piece to layer over leggins, long sleeve onesie, and under a sweater.

Fast forward to today.  I've been eyeing the blue yarn, never one to waste. I could frog it to make another little dress, or use it for dish cloths, or make a few little head scarves (I still have ample yarn, I spent $9 on the yarn for the dress and only used $6 worth, actually less since there's so much of the yellow and white left over).

Run!

I figured I'd try it on her just one more time. The weather is warm and lovely. She's been enjoying just a diaper and tee in the house. Easy changes. Breezy legs.

Well... IT FITS! Happy Joy! The slippers may be a loss but the dress is a success! It's not for a 6-9 month, it's for 12-18 month. Consistent with my trend to make things too big, which I started back when I first learned to crochet, the dress just wasn't ready for Mae yet. But now Mae is ready for the dress.

I'm going to have to make some bloomers to match!