Poppy & Jazz Baby/Child Pansy Dress

I love the Poppy & Jazz range of patterns, and have most of the patterns in this range as they make for great basics. They were designed after the designer had a child, so they're all very functional as well as cute. The dress is a simple jersey dress - a long sleeve bodice with a gathered skirt attached. I find the patterns tend to come up big, and this one very much so. My daughter is nearly 3, and despite making the size 2-3 it's pretty big on her. I know you should check measurements, but try keeping a toddler still long enough to take them!

The dress was a lovely easy sew. I feel like I'm finally getting to grips with sewing with stretch fabrics and it shows. I definitely prefer using the sewing machine, although it takes a lot longer than using the overlocker. And I'm happy to zig zag the hems too, rather than faffing with twin needles - they're great if your machine uses them well, but I usually get tunnelling, or the thread breaks after a few wears, so zig zag is the better option for me.

The only thing I'll do differently when I make this pattern again is to try an alternative method for gathering the skirt. I find the gathering method I use for wovens - two lines of basting that's the pulled to create gathers - doesn't work as well on jersey, so I'll maybe try using elastic cut to the bodice width instead.

As you can see, we love the finished dress (in fact, we have two of them!) . It's been a fab layer in the colder weather recently (I managed to take off all of her layers for this photo as we were in a big greenhouse picking strawberries). The dress is cute, it's functional, and the fabric is so soft and cosy.