One of the things that I found with crochet is, that many of the patterns and stitches have a lacy look to them. They are really nice for dresses, dreamy little sweaters and lacy accessories. I have spent many a day looking at all the different shapes and patterns and adding them to my inspiration pinterest boards. Every once in a while I would go “ohhhh that is soooo pretty” over some little dress or other. Now, the problem here is, that I do not have a little daughter to make these things for.

Luckily, one of my friends has the most adorable little girl and when I saw her for the first time, I just had to make her something. Somehow I felt that every little girl (and every little boy, too) should have something handmade. Something that contains a lot of love and patience and care.

I went on to research crochet dresses and sweaters for little girls and finally came across something I liked:

 

Crochet Tunic

Blogpost with Charts

I adjusted it a little bit and it came out like a dress:

What I did

Material

• 3 balls of DROPS Love You # 7
• 2.5 mm Hook

Measurement

I was unable to take direct measurements form the little girl I was making the dress for, so I googled average measurements for her size. The things I needed to know were:

• circumference around her hips
• circumference around her waist
• circumference around her chest under her arms
• length between shoulder and mid upper thigh
• length between shoulder and waist
• length between shoulder and under arm (comfortably)

I needed the waist, hip and chest measurements so the dress would not be too wide or too tight. The shoulder to mid-thigh measurement accounted for the total length of the dress and the shoulder to waist let me know where to set in with the skirt. Finally, the shoulder to under-arm measurement helped make sure the front part of the dress went high enough and left enough space for the arm. This would be much more relevant if you were making something with sleeves.

Working up the pattern

It took me a good while to make sense of the instructions on the blog where I found the pattern for the individual stitches. In the end, I used the first stitch for the middle part of the body and the second one for the chest. I made the body and lower chest part in rounds and then switched to rows to get the front part longer so it would go up to the collar bones. I decided to leave the back part of the dress as it was, so it would go over her back under her shoulders.

The edging around the neck and back is the pattern shown in the third picture on that site. I decided to leave the straps as adjustable ribbons so I did not have to worry about making them too long or too short.

I used the pineapple pattern for the skirt and did two full pineapples and the corresponding half that filled up the spaces. By then it was long enough and I just tied it up nicely.

To make the pattern fit, you will have to calculate how many pattern repeats you need to get the desired measurement. The pattern for the middle part repeats every 8 stitches. The pineapple part starts with 14 stitches. If you can not get to a good measurement with something divisible by 8 and 14, use a multiple of 8 that brings you closest. You can then fill up the missing stitches when you set in the skirt. It will hardly show if you just insert and increase here or there.

Sending it off

I can’t wait to send this off to my friend and get a picture of his daughter wearing it. I will let you know how it looked! Making the dress did not take that long. I liked that I could test how something looked by just making a smaller version of it. Had I wanted to make something similar for myself, it would have taken much longer.