A Crochet Dress: My 1st Garment!

I made a dress! This was my first garment, and I bit off more than I could chew. (You can read my recent post on crochet gauge problems for details.) Although it isn’t the perfect fit I wanted, this crochet dress is extremely dear to me because of the time I spent with it and what I learned from its construction. The project was also a travel buddy: it went with me on two vacations and traveled just over 3,000 miles by car! In fact, it’s been through 8 states in the front passenger seat. Few WIPs are so well-traveled.

I went searching for crochet dress patterns because I wanted something to wear over a bathing suit. I’m going on a cruise in April, so my goal was to have it finished by then. After searching and searching, I finally found this pattern. Bingo! It was exactly what I was looking for. Which isn’t exactly the dress I made, but…. well, I’ll tell you more about that!

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NOTE: To be clear, I did NOT design this pattern. The pictured result is mine, but the info above links to the designer’s original pattern. Check it out!

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Aunt Lydia’s Natural Beauty Crochet Dress

Thread Choice

Although I enjoy Aunt Lydia’s crochet thread, I substituted Curio #3 in Blue because I wanted to try something new. I would definitely buy it again; I loved it. I was relieved that it held up well to frogging and re-working over and over, as well. Two thumbs up!

Gauge & Hook Sizes

The pattern suggests using a 3.75mm hook, but I used everything from 2.25 to 3.00. I ended up using the 3.0mm hook for the final version of the dress, which was still probably too small. I won’t go into detail about my uppercase Gauge Problems, since I already covered that. The short version is that I sincerely wanted to meet gauge to ensure a good fit, but got so frustrated I gave up. (After many tries, let it be known.) Therefore, my dress isn’t quite the right measurements, and the yoke and body sections don’t land where they’re supposed to on my figure.

Neckband

I made size Small/Medium. For that size, the neckband is simply one round of 156 single crochets, so I nailed that part. A+!

Yoke

This is the most ornate section and part of what attracted me to this pattern. I enjoyed making it, which is good because I made it twice! I re-worked multiple rounds during my first attempt, too, so I actually worked parts of it thrice. The yoke is meant to cover more area than mine does (because of my small hook choice), so I’m afraid my piece won’t show off the stitch patterns very well.

Body

The first round of the body mystified me, never having worked something like a crochet dress pattern before. I was confused, but I followed the pattern to the letter and was so excited when I realized what “dividing round” means and how it works.

The yoke is a big circle, which is divided by skipping the stitches that will form the armholes. This is done in the first round of the body, so the body is only worked into the front and back parts of the yoke. This was a design lightbulb moment for me! The pattern specifies which stitches to mark, to aid in skipping the correct numbers of stitches.

The stitch pattern in the body is straight-forward. Because my yoke was too short, I made the body eight rounds longer than called for. I didn’t want the skirt to start from my armpits!

Sleeves

Okay, you’re supposed to crochet the sleeves directly onto the piece at the end, but I skipped ahead for two reasons: 1) I knew the skirt would be a long haul, so I wanted to leave that for last. 2) If I ran out of thread and ended up ordering more from a different dye lot, I thought a shade change would be less noticeable in the skirt versus the sleeves.

I didn’t want to fasten off the thread when I switched to making the sleeves, so I left the small ball attached to the body and safety-pinned it into the fabric to keep it from rolling around. Then I worked the sleeves from a different ball. I like that the sleeves are crocheted directly onto the piece (no sewing!), but the finished sleeves are my least favorite part of the crochet dress. Since the yoke almost forms a cap sleeve by itself, I’m curious about what it would’ve looked like without the sleeves. Not curious enough to rip them off, though!

Skirt

Ah, the skirt! This is my favorite part. Each round of the skirt contained 223 treble crochets, so it ate up the remaining balls of thread quickly. With all that repetition, I spent a lot of time thinking about my treble crochet technique and how to make it more efficient. I tried to minimize how wide of a movement I made when yarning over and pulling loops through, and also took many stretch breaks.

I started the skirt two months into the project, which means I spent almost two months on the skirt alone! (Except for taking a week-long break to make a bald eagle appliqué.) The pattern says to repeat Round 2 of the skirt until the piece measures a certain length, but I wanted mine a little longer. I repeated the round 37 times, so I made 8,474 trebles in rounds 2-39 of the skirt! That sounds like too much, but it was actually fun. Round 40 was a simple edging round of chains and single crochets.

Every time I finished a ball of thread, I took a picture to see how far I got:

Finishing

As I joined each new ball of thread to the project, I held the two tails together and made a slipknot to keep them secure until I finished the pattern. I had 20 ends to sew in, and I enjoyed it once I started. It was like a fun maze through the lacy stitches.

Once I finished sewing in the ends, I couldn’t believe I was done. Surely must be something else to do! I was scared to try it on, because of my gauge issues. And what if I hated it? When I put it on, I’m pleased to report that I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t love it. The shape was too straight for my taste, so I crocheted a cord to help pull in the sides.

Adding a Cord Belt

My first plan for the belt was to make an I-cord, which I didn’t yet know how to do. I followed PlanetJune‘s tutorial on how to crochet an i-cord and quickly ditched that idea. I wouldn’t have the patience for slipping loops of thread on and off the hook. No thanks! While I was watching that tutorial, I noticed another video on a different type of cord: a Basic Crochet Cord. I watched the video, glanced at a few other options online, and decided to go with this quick and easy cord.

Once I figured it was long enough, I used it to play with our cat. (First things first!) Then, I threaded it through the stitches of the second-to-last row of the body. Ta-da!

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Take-aways for Crocheting Garments

Though I was initially underwhelmed with my finished dress, it’s been growing on me since I first tried it on. I’m proud of the work that went into it, and I can’t wait to wear it as a bathing suit cover-up on our cruise next year. Here are some take-aways for this project:

• Gauge is important. I knew it in theory before, and now I know it from first-hand experience.
• I want to get a plain dress to wear underneath, so it won’t be only for bathing suits.
• My next garment projects will be simpler patterns, and I need to double-check the gauge requirements before choosing. I’m looking forward to making a sweater and a cardigan early next year. I’m also looking forward to successfully meeting gauge.
• Crochet a cord to use as a cat toy.

That’s all for now!

— Kelsey, Skippy & Softy