Coming Soon!

A Marine Camouflage print Dress. The fabric arrived today, and the yarn that best matches is brown. I have several skeins already on hand and I'm planning on making up one of these dresses as soon as possible.

I also received some Air Force Print fabric, but it is not suitable for dresses because it's a nylon laminate. I knew that it was suppose to be 100% nylon, but I didn't not realize it would have a laminate side. This fabric would be more suitable for making bibs, diaper covers, aprons, and anything else that requires a water proof side to it. So the Air Force Dress will have to wait till I can find another source of fabric.

It's kind of difficult to tell with this picture, but it looks like (in real life) either the light tan or pale teal green yarn would go with the Tiger Stripe Air Force fabric.

These fabrics are not easy to get a hold of.

ACU Cami

This dress I finished last night...

Cami ACU Dress

These are a surprise gift for someone who has been such an enormous help to me this year. I couldn't have made it through some of my biggest obstacles without her friendship and mentoring. I'm pretty sure she doesn't read this blog...so the secret is safe with us.

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.

ACU Dress

I've resisted making this dress for a while. But the overwhelming popularity of camouflage clothing for children won out. So I decided to go as authentic as possible. My dreams of having a full range of camouflage dresses to match each service branch are far from met, but for now the Army Camouflage dress is now a reality.

The first group of these dresses will be done in 100% twill ACU fabric. I hope to acquire some 50% cotton/ 50% nylon ACU fabric later. However, that won't be for a while.

If anyone knows of a source for authentic fabrics for the Air Force and Marines, let me know. And I really don't know what pattern the Navy uses, but I've never had anyone express interest in a Navy camouflage dress.