Seashore Sundress & a GIVEAWAY

My last handmade thing to hit the bog for 2017 is a new dress for A.

The Seashore Sundress is one of the earlier Oliver + S patterns but one that I've never made until now.  You know what I'm going to say next, right? Why, oh why did I wait? It's such

a lovely little pattern!

I waited so long in fact that she has outgrown the smaller size range (6m to 4 years) and we're straight into the bigger pattern with a size 6. She measures with the width of a six but the height of about a size 8 so I added 3/4" in length to the body of the dress and another 3/4" to the hem of the skirt. I think it came out just right!

If I'm honest, the main reason I never sewed this dress is that when it's hot enough in Australia to wear a dress like this, then it's unwise to have so much skin exposed to the sun. But then there are days when it's so jolly hot you don't even go outside, so a pretty, bare shouldered dress is OK after all.

The fabric is a very light, semi-sheer cotton that I bought from The Fabric Store quite a few years ago. I think it may have been intended for the Fairy Tale dress pattern as there was more than my standard 1m-cut-for-kids-clothes, but I liked the look of the scalloped print matching with the Seashore moniker.

Little pockets  -yay!

Of course the fabric did give me the challenge of matching the print across all those seams. I was confident I could do the horizontal line part OK, but to get the curves to be at the same point in their wave form across each seam would be impossible. The solution to trick the eye away from the slight mismatch of the waves was to throw in some flat piping along every seam.

For the smaller sizes (size chart here) the pattern also comes with a cute pair of bloomer style knickers to wear underneath. Given the way this kid cartwheels non stop, and seems to be upside down as often as she is right way up, I should probably try drafting up the pattern and making her a matching pair!

In my quest to own every Oliver + S pattern in paper form I had accidentally bought the paper Seashore Sundress pattern in the smaller size range twice. After I realised my mistake it took many months of searching to track down the paper pattern in the larger size.

I think that pose says "Get to the point, mum!"...

So, I have a Seashore Sundress (6m to 4) paper pattern to give away as a little New Year's gift to a lucky blog reader. I'm happy to post it to anywhere in the world.  Just leave a comment below, and to help you think of something to say, how about telling me about the pattern that you left on the shelf for ages but then fell in love with - or at least the most recent one of those as I seem to do that very often.
(Please make sure you leave an email address so I can contact the winner regarding postage)

Now, have a happy new year! And that's an order!