Summer Play

A girl definitely needs her party dress but sometimes she just wants to let her hair down. However, it’s still important to maintain her unique style while swinging, scaling the play structures, or sailing head first down the slides at the local parks. Luckily, the Oliver + S patterns allow for the wildly varying days of a three year old.

Because play days outnumber garden parties for a three year old I decided to make two playsuits. The blue playsuit uses fabrics from Katie Jump Rope by Denyse Schmidt. I was a bit worried that this fabric felt so much lighter than other quilting cottons. Not to worry though because it washed and sewed up beautifully, a really wonderful weight for summer clothing. The other fabrics are of unknown, or more correctly forgotten, origin.

As with the tea party dress, the playsuits went together easily. So easily in fact I took the extra time to finish all the seams with the overlock stitch found on my Bernina. It’s a really nice stitch feature to have in the absence of a serger. I have to say I’m pretty impressed with how professional these two garments look because of it.

I did make one minor change to the pattern. Rather than using operable buttons on the bodice I used Velcro. After talking to a very wise Nana I came to the realization that this would be very important when it came to potty time. It seems that at three there isn’t a lot of warning. I have to go potty means I should have told you ten minutes ago. Well, ahem.

So out the door goes this pretty little package. I wish I could be there to see her face when she opens it. I’m hoping it’s the same response I got when I showed her the tea party dress, “That’s so cool! So cool! Thanks Auntie J.”

And that is why little Miss Lou is my number one customer.