crafterhours

sleeping babes. crafting moms.

Doli Tank and my inability to follow directions no matter how great they are

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If you follow me on Instagram you saw a few snippets of this dress in progress. Sarah of LouBeeClothing sent her Doli Tank pattern for me to test and I shared some of it as I worked. She said “it’s fast! and easy!” and I said “GIVE IT TO ME NOW.” And she’s just released it for the entire world to sew up.
For my test version, because I can’t ever do anything normally, I had to use a fabric that wasn’t particularly recommended AND get so excited about the stripey binding that I failed to consider stretch recovery AND I had to make it a dress rather than a tank. I shake my head at myself a lot of the time.

As far as the fabric, a cotton stretch sateen that’s a little weightier than quilting cotton, I’m willing to give up some drape because I love this fabric with the shape of this dress. It’s not a fabric you can ruffle or pleat or gather much.

As far as the stretch recovery issue with the stripey binding, I just added some elastic thread through the neck binding as if I’d *meant* it to be a casing and for the arms I switched to a binding with more spandex content. It’s the spandex that creates “stretch recovery”. Like, you know, when you wear a cotton shirt and stretch it out and it stays all sad and stretched out, it has no stretch recovery. And when it snaps back mostly the way it was, it has some stretch recovery. At least until you pull your knees into your shirt and sit like that for an hour watching “Goonies”. Bathing suits, for example, have a loooooot of stretch recovery. Unless they’re 47 years old and the spandex (or other similar component with elastic qualities.)

As far as the dress versus the tank decision I definitely could’ve made this a bit shorter but I haven’t been moved to go back and shorten it. It’s nice that it’s long enough that I haven’t seen her expose her bum in it. At least not unintentionally. So that’s working for me. And she’ll get another year out of it.

The pattern itself is beautifully designed and easy to follow. My resistance to direction-following has nothing to do with the pattern and everything to do with patterns in general. I get distracted either by other home goings-on or by my own brilliant ideas, when sometimes I really should just follow. the. damn. pattern.

I’ve heard that since the testers did their thing Sarah added an alternate assembly option that’ll look familiar-ish to anyone who has tried and loved a Kitschy Coo pattern, and has also slimmed down the binding width a bit to help bindings lay nice and flat and lovely.

Big sister has requested a tank, so hers is up next. I will follow the directions this time! Wait, I need to write that down somewhere so that I don’t forget.

Meanwhile, this monkey lives in this dress. And you can spill aaaaaanything on this crazy print and no one would know. As far as fabric origin, I got it at Paron Fabrics on this trip. The selvedge isn’t helpful, just says “Pattern 24603” and googling it didn’t get me very far. If I were you and wanted this fabric, that’d irritate me. Since I’m me and not you, all I can say is: Sorry! But you were looking for an excuse to hop on over to the Garment District anyway… right?

Visit Sarah at LouBeeClothing for the pattern– and hey! I get to give one away, too! Enter by leaving a comment here or on our Facebook page (or both if you’re into that) by Monday afternoon 4/22, and be sure to leave your e-mail address if your profile doesn’t enable us to contact you. The winner will be announced on our Facebook page.

Comments

  13. Corinnea says

    Ha! You sound like my daughter. Instructions were invented for people without imagination!! Personally, I like instructions for the bones. Then I like to get crazy. (Well, as crazy as I get, which when I think about it is not very crazy.)

    Reply

  14. Wendy says

    This dress looks lovely. I’ve been looking at little girls dresses all weekend while looking for a pattern that will work for both my almost 5 year old and my 2 month old. I think I might end up using different patterns and the same fabric. :)

    Reply

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