I’ve long admired the Oliver + S Puppet Show Dress, but despite much internet scouring (much like my experience with the Playdate Dress), I was never able to find a copy of the pattern after it went out of print. Then a few months ago Oliver + S came to the rescue and released it as their first digital pattern, so I decided to give it a try for Christmas this year.
I’d personally rather pay a little more for an original copy of the pattern, mostly because they’re such lovely things to have around, but I must say, the pdf version was flawless. They give you the option of printing the pattern pieces on 8.5 x 11 paper at home, or in one large sheet at a place like Kinko’s. I priced it out at Kinko’s but $9 seemed steep, so I used my own printer. Any pattern pieces that were too large to fit on one sheet of paper were printed with a one-inch grid behind them, which made them really easy to line up. And everything lined up perfectly, which never seems to happen for me when I print a pattern from a pdf file. Cutting and piecing was was time consuming (it took me over an hour to prep all the pieces), but the fact that everything fit together so nicely made it all okay.
I got stuck with the directions at one point – I must have reread them ten times and I still couldn’t wrap my mind around what I was supposed to do. Luckily, I was working on the dress at the Friday Night “Sew-cial” at Modern Domestic (a gorgeous classroom/open sewing studio and Bernina dealership in NE Portland), which meant there was someone on duty to answer questions (none other than Shelly Figueroa of Sewing for Boys and Patterns by Figgy’s!) – she helped me make sense of the directions, and the rest was pretty much smooth sailing.
And those three hours I spent on this Bernina 330 kinda ruined any love I ever had for my own machine. It was pretty dreamy.
Anyway, here’s Lila in the dress. It’s a 2T and it ended up fitting pretty well, I think.
I love the sweet little details, like the peter pan collar, puffed sleeves, and button-up sleeve cuffs.
The not-so-Christmasy fabric is a pink and red Moda pindot from the Ruby line by Bonnie & Camille, and the collar and sleeve cuffs are Kona Snow.
I’ll admit, the inside of this dress is less than beautiful, but hey, it’s the inside after all. And I didn’t finish the hem facing by hand, I just didn’t have it in me. I was really just ready for it to be done so that I didn’t have to tell Lila that her daddy would be putting her to bed again because I needed to work on her dress. To which she responded each time, “No YOU put me to bed, and daddy will work on my dress!” I tried to explain to her how ridiculous that suggestion was, but she didn’t find it anywhere near as hilarious as I did.
And last but not least, a photo from her visit with Santa today. I know, poor Baby Girl, forced to wear last year’s Christmas dress again. This was the best shot we got – totally stone-faced and leaning toward safety.
But you can’t hope for a gem like this every year…
