Hopscotch Dresses

In a sale some time ago, I acquired the digital version of Oliver+S Hopscotch Pattern in both size ranges. Then, last year I decided to have a pattern with something like 80 pages printed out in large format instead by PDFplotting.com, and since I'd found the Oliver+S patterns less enjoyable to piece together when printed at home than many other digital patterns, I printed a few of the Hopscotch pattern at the same time to maximize shipping. This January, I sewed some up!

  I used some cotton/rayon/spandex knit from Girl Charlee for these- I only had 4 yards, and I wasn't sure how far it would go, so I started by sewing Booper's dress from start to finish, which also gave me a good idea of how the pattern fit and any changes I wanted to make.

  Since these dresses are cut pretty slim, it actually wasn't hard to fit all four of them on the fabric- I might have been able to sneak in even one more!

  Booper's dress seemed like it didn't have quite enough fabric around the hips, so I flared out just a little below the waist for the other three. I also added length to the hems of the three older girls' dresses, but made a straight size 3 for Foof.

  Next time I would widen the shoulders a little bit for the three older girls too... that's a change I've been making to patterns more frequently for them!

  These sewed up gorgeously- I really liked the pattern, and definitely plan to use it again at some point! The fabric was about a 7oz weight, lighter than I prefer, but worked really well here.

  I might use a non-stretch interfacing rather than a stretch one at the bottom of the front yokes before attaching the gathers next time, but even the knit interfacing made those gathers so much neater than they would have been.

  This was also the first project I had a chance to use my Christmas present on! My husband bought me a Janome CoverPro 1000CPX (affiliate link). It definitely has a learning curve that I haven't fully conquered yet, and I absolutely recommend getting the clear foot if you want to have any idea what you are sewing, but look at this pretty hem!

  The girls wore these dresses rather frequently when the weather was cool enough for them... I only wish I'd made them earlier in the season!

Thanks for stopping by,