ACU Dress

Another blustery day, and my fourth ACU dress is now complete.

Something I need to talk about is pre-washing fit vs. after first wash fit. This dress is currently much looser than it will be. It's because it has not been washed yet. The larger the dress size, the greater the pre-wash disproportion is going to be. When I make a dress that's larger than a 6yr size, I'm branching out of my comfort zone. I've made many dresses in the smaller sizes and so I sort of know how those will work out given past knitting formulas and measurements I've taken of all the dresses. Also, my girls own many of my first experiments, and I've been able to see how the dresses turn out as they wear them over time. What I've noticed is the larger the knit top, the more over sized it seems to be at first. This isn't so noticeable with the smaller ones because there is less knitting. Oh this is hard to explain.

Here's another way to put it. The bodices stretch because of the stretchy yarn. The smaller bodices might have a span of only 4 inches, where as the larger ones might stretch up to 10 inches...because it's bigger. Make sense?

So this dress should shrink down to the desired size, and will look a little better after the first wash. I'll try and post a example next time I make a dress for my girls, with a before and after shot.