L-O-L-A Lola! (As a Dress).

First garment for 2014! Recently I signed on for both Pinterest and Instagram. I felt a bit left out of all the cool behind the scenes crafting conversations that were taking place - and like I needed to build my social networking empire more (cue image of me doing a Dr Evil-pinkie to the mouth-type pose).

Anyway, I kept seeing images of very funky striped t-shirt dresses. I became obsessed. I had to have one.

Luckily for me, Tessuti released their Lola T-Shirt Pattern. I bought it, figuring I would simply extend the shirt into a dress. Readers, it worked. All I did was lay the shirt pattern pieces on some swedish tracing paper and very crudely hand sketch them into dress length. It is THE easiest thing I've ever done to a pattern. Here is what I ended up with:

I made a size small with a medium at the shoulders only. I really did not want the sleeves to creep up.

The fabric is a lovely viscose knit from Joys Fabric Warehouse in Geelong.

The stripes were way too irregular to try and match.

I don't know if you can tell, but I accidentally cut it slightly off grain. Whoops!

This pattern came together well, as do all Tessuti patterns. I am fortunate in that I can generally make the size small with no or only minor adjustments.

I think you'll be seeing some Lola Tees in my future, and possibly another dress a la Anna's adjustments. It is such a great basic pattern, and perfect for knocking about with my kid. I wore this to her doctor's visit this morning - turns out the poor lass has an allergy to sunscreen (not just the sunscreen itself but the volume of sunscreen applied) - this is pure torture for Little M, as putting on sunscreen is one of her favourite things to do. She even pretends all manner of things are sunscreen - a banana, a small glass jar, a face washer, you name it, it becomes sunscreen for her to apply to herself, others, and every doll or stuffed animal she owns. How on earth am I going to break it to her that she has to lay off the stuff?