I’ve scaled down my makes recently for an upcoming birthday.  Having found Kirsty Hartley’s second book (Wild Things To Make) in a local shop, I decided to begin with a simple A line girl’s dress to begin with.

I made the first dress from an old dress of mine.  I was a bit concerned about the fit but when the first one worked out successfully, I cut out another.

There are a couple of options for the fastening.  For the test dress, I used the button and loop method.  The book does advise that you can omit the back seam using this method, but it does mean that you can’t finish off the armholes as well.  The second dress I made with a regular zip.  The book provides guidance for both methods.

One thing I must mention with this book is that the templates which are available to download online do not include the seam or hem allowance!  Fortunately, I’d recently purchased a little measure gauge which made adding a seam allowance much easier.  While it can be annoying to have this omitted, it does mean that you can choose different seam allowances to reduce fabric wastage (or squeeze the pattern onto a remnant!).

The cap sleeves look a bit odd on the hanger, but I’ve been told that they are suitable for a baby who doesn’t like getting changed as they are easier!  The length was also suitable for the 6-18 month range as it was short enough to allow for crawling.

There are much more interesting and ambitious makes in this book as well as the first Wild Things book, but I’ve been happy with this simple start.  It’s great to have a pattern which doesn’t take too long, isn’t too fussy, and means that you can use a great patterned fabric.

Another great point to note is that it goes from 6 months to 5 years which makes me breath a sigh of relief as I have more time to try out these patterns before my niece grows out of them!