Louisa in knit (again)

I love how woven fabric dresses look but in our household knit fabrics are much more practical. I literally never iron (with the exception of ironing my stabilizer on fabric to make an application). So when I have to choose what I prefer on my daughters, a knit dress or an extremely wrinkly woven, I usually choose the knit version. I say usually because it happens that my kid goes to school in a dress that looks like she slept in it (but even if I would have ironed it is would look like that after half a day of play anyway, right?).

I love the Louisa dress, and have been planning to make a woven version for long (I even already own several fabric combinations that I picked out for this dress especially), but I have not come around to do it. Two months ago I did sew a Louisa from knit for my middle daughter. The dress was a bit wide but she likes wearing it. Yesterday I decided to make another knit Louisa, but this time for my eldest. She is very slim and I let her put on her younger siblings version and (besides the length) it fitted perfectly. I therefor reused the old cut paper pattern pieces and lengthened the whole thing to create a knee length dress (I am lazy like that remember my ironing confession). With hindsight I should have redrawn the pattern using the original pattern, the extra pieces are a bit too low. This is why pattern go through a lot of testing before they are released... Well the dress will be in rotation for at least a whole year (she can easily grow 15 cm in it so probably two years wont be a problem either) so the fit will become better in the future.

Oh and how she loves that big pocket!

This time I did use piping between the layers, instead a bias. I put an elastic cord in the piping to maintain stretch. The sewing of the pipping was quite a struggle. I first wanted to try out the pipping foot of my serger but a thick pipping in combination with stretchy knit did not work (this might be solved by practicing more). Then I tried a stretch stitch combined with my zipper foot on my normal machine. This again was not a winning combination either. I ended up using a three layered stitch on my sewing machine. This is not stretchy but it is strong and I was able to sew close to the piping.

For the fabric I used three different Lillestoffs. The relatively solid pink is a stretchy jeans look knit (ideal for winter because it is a bit thicker), the flower is organic "normal"knit and the pipping is a piece of woman's fabric I used for my I [heart] Marcel Marlier sew along dress as well (also knit).

My daughter found a weed on our usual picture spot and she (less lazy as me) had to remove it. She removed it professionally with roots and asked me if we could plant it back... My little environmentalist.