Play All Day Dress - free PDF Pattern Review from Its Always Autumn

Fleur hates fussy dresses. It's not so long since she refused to wear a dress at all, even for church. But  she started school a year ago, and the uniform is a dress or skirt - all the girls wear them, and she has no choice. And strangely, she will now on occasion accept wearing a dress, But no frills. Not pink. Nothing 'itchy'. So far, she accepted this tartan dress for Christmas, and this black and white dress in the spring. But that only gives her a limited number of dresses, and she's attending a four day Hindu wedding. So she needed a couple more. Here's the first. She chose the fabric herself. And the simple as can be design was one she could accept.

This is modelled on the Play All Day dress from It's Always Autumn. I've had this pattern on my list for a while now, but for my grand-daughters who really like wearing skirts, It probably isn't frilly enough - they like dresses that spin! However, I thought it might be just the thing for Fleur. She hates things with narrow shoulder straps, or strings. She doesn't like puffy sleeves. Frills - don't even think about it. She doesn't like a fitted waistband (claims they itch her, and perhaps they do). The simplicity of this pattern also solved another problem - I had very little time to turn this out and deliver it before they all went on holiday.

The free PDF pattern is designed for knits, but would work with a light woven fabric, too.

It comes in 6 different sizes: ages 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14. Fleur is 5 years old - but very tall for her age - see her with her 4 year old sister below. I would normally make her a size 7-8, but this is a very loose dress made with a knit fabric. So I used the age 6 pattern, but I made the pattern piece about 1/4" wider so it would work for size 7. 

I dropped the waist a bit as she has a long back, and measured the length needed for the skirt. In her case, this was 18.5" from waist to finished hem.) Being a bit mean with printing paper, I only printed off and traced the top part of the pattern, and the skirt hem to get the shape of the curve. In between, I just continued the side seam of the bodice down to join the hem. (So you have to imagine a line joining the bottom of the side of the top above, and the top of the 'age 6 bottom' line below.)

Other than that, I pretty much followed Its Always Autumn's pattern and instructions exactly. (Which is rare for me.) The main difference in the way I constructed the dress was that instead of just attaching the elastic inside the waist level marked, I used a strip of fabric to make a channel on the inside to thread the elastic through, so Fleur couldn't complain of itchy elastic next to her skin. I measured her waist - 22.5" - and used 23" of soft 1/2" elastic overlapped by 2" (so I could loosen it if she grew a bit more in width).

I don't have a serger, so I sewed the neckline and armholes with a narrow zigzag stitch on my sewing machine, to retain a bit of stretch. This is it before pressing, I should have taken another picture after it was pressed, really, as the slight wrinkles disappeared. But I was working to a deadline!

But it looks very nice on, and as you can see, it's a great fit.

And it went down well enough that she was spotted wearing it on more than one occasion!

Think I'll have to make her another one! Overall, a very recommendable pattern. Thank you, Its Always Autumn.