little dresses.

Before my last market, I worked like mad to make one little dress or top a day to have a mostly vacant yet interesting clothes rack. Confession: I didn't sell a single dress that day. Not a single one!

While this might upset many people, I just sort of rolled with things. I realized quite quickly that my dress prices were out-of-line with the market. It's hard to compete on cost with pillowcase and swing dresses. They sew up quicker and use less fabric. It's silly to compete on cost in general. I know what my time is worth and at the end of the day, I'd rather have them back hanging in my wardrobe than sold for pittance.

Because they didn't sell, I did the only reasonable thing. I gave away heaps of those dresses and suddenly I've found that I'm down to five with a market in two weeks. Mind you, I'm not going to make many. And I certainly don't expect them to sell.

There's some sort of magic formula that says you need at least 2 of every garment in every size in every fabric. I have one word for that: Gak! No joy there.


While in Japan, I vowed to make at least one dress with the Little Red fabric (if you're feeling a bit of LRR overload, you can relax. I suspect this is the last you'll see of it on this blog. It's selling quickly.)

I used the Oliver+S Playdate pattern which is now out-of-print, but luckily still available in Australia. (More large size Playdate and other Oliver+S patterns are due in from the distributor tomorrow afternoon!) With such a busy print, I decided to keep things simple and omit the ruffle and bias around the collar. That way you can first focus on the little girl's face framed by Kona snow, and then you can find the special gems hidden in the fabric.

Speaking of hidden gems, this pattern has nice deep pockets for hiding little things. Especially sweet when they get turned inside out as always seems to happen.


So there it is, my first little dress of the spring market season. As with my earlier dresses, it's unlikely to sell. If that happens it will find it's way into the shop and eventually find it's way to a friend. Does it bother me knowing that it's unlikely to sell? No. I enjoyed every minute of making it.


This 2T dress has found a new home! I've had my first dress sale ever. I'm all smiles and sunshine now.