Juggling Jott Jump Rope Dress

"And, now, come to this spot

Where the spotlight is hot

And you'll see in the spotlight

A Juggling Jott

Who can juggle some stuff

You might think he could not...

Such as twenty-two question marks,

Which is a lot.

Also forty-four commas

And, also, one dot!

That's the kind of Circus McGurkus I've got!"

Dr Seuss - If I Ran the Circus

This dress certainly has more than forty-four commas, and many more dots! 

I first saw this fabric about three years ago and loved the idea of a punctuation dress. I bought the fabric an embarrassingly long time ago (from Urban Sew) and stashed it away. With the Oliver + S monochrome challenge underway it seemed the perfect time to finally sew it up.

I didn't get a lot of enthusiasm from A when she first saw it, but once I got "If I Ran the Circus" off the bookshelf and read her the passage about the Juggling Jott, and pointed out all her commas and dots, she was all over it. 

Personally, I love it. The pattern is the Oliver + S Jump Rope dress and it never fails to please. This is my third version of View A (here's the first and second) and I've made view B three times before as well (one, two and three). I've also used the pattern to make a girl's polo shirt and borrowed the placket instructions for a boy's polo shirt. If you want to feel like a sewing rock star then sew this placket. You are guaranteed to be doing the happy dance around your sewing table and feeling very smug.

The details of the dress pattern are a bit lost in the print from a distance, so let's have some close ups shots:

The very first dress I made for A was this pattern. I made a size 2, simply because I could not see myself dressing a non ambulatory baby in such a detailed dress. When I'd finished, it looked enormous and I could barely imagine her ever growing into it.

But she did eventually grow (oh those first 20 months seemed to go on for ever) and she wore it until she was almost 4 years old. It's a fairly generously sized pattern, but at the same time it's one of those dresses that is best put on by putting the kids hands in first then arms above their head to bring it down and get the shoulders in.

Anyway, without measuring her, I randomly nominated a size 4 with the skirt length extended to the size 5 line. And it's a perfect fit.

While I'm prone to turning my nose up at quilting cottons, whenever I do sew one I find it refreshingly easy to work with. This Moda fabric behaved very nicely and while it's a coarser fabric to the Art Gallery quilting cottons that I last used, it drapes nicely and still feels soft.

I'm kind of hoping that she'll choose to wear this dress to one of her school orientation mornings next month. If she's anything like her brother she won't be able to stop herself from pointing out which are the commas, and which are the full stops.  And that's the kind of nerdy grammar stuff that makes my heart sing. :)

Summer has come early, and somewhat ferociously, so we headed down to the beach to play and take some pictures. At first she wanted to hold my hand to get from one rock to another, but within a few minutes she was leaping and following P as best she could. It's amazing to watch those physical skills get practiced and the confidence that comes with it. Of course they both ended up with wet shoes, but hey, it was warm.

If I had my choice between sitting and watching organised sport on a Saturday morning, or watching rock hopping I know which I'd choose. If only the dead sea birds didn't smell so bad.