Pattern Review – Red Heart’s Snow Princess Dress

I love to browse through the free patterns on RedHeart.com for inspiration of what to do with my huge stash of super saver yarns.  My wish list of things to make is huge.  These days I am not the only one that looks at the pattern pictures and adds things to the list.  Mermaid is starting her own. Which lead me to making the Snow Princess Dress for her this weekend.

We all know that one famous Disney Princess who was a Snow Princess – Elsa of course.  As soon as she saw the promo picture she started bouncing around on the couch like a lunatic screaming (I kid you not) “We need to go to the yarn store right now! You need to make this for me.  I NEED THIS!”  Not going to lie, it was a pretty proud parenting moment.  Not only does she have complete faith I could make it for her, but that I would go right to the yarn store and buy the yarn to make it.

So off to the yarn store we went.  In my crazy head I thought, ‘hey I can work that in to my to-do list now that I have the yarn.’ So I put the yarn in my studio and went back to work on a project I already had on the couch. Ten minutes later the bag of yarn was plopped in my lap.  Mermaid went and got it from the studio and brought it to me.  You know because I needed to make her dress.  Forget the blanket that I was working on.

Overall I was impressed with the pattern.  Even though you have to work it in a few sections the instructions are pretty clear so you know where your going and how your going to get there.  I do have a few tips and tricks though on how to make the dress unique for your little one.

I had planned to take pictures of each stage so you could see how the dress progresses.  That didn’t happen for two reasons.  One the dress moves really quickly.  Two – I have never been micromanaged so much in my life. Including when I was in boot camp for the Army!  She woke me up at 6 am to inquire why I wasn’t awake and working on her dress.  Now in the middle of the day I can see that it is funny.  At 6 am this morning it was really not a funny in the least.

My Recommendations:

If you know how to make the stitches (double crochet, chain, and half double crochet) you can make this dress.  There are a few special stitches but they are spelled out in detail at the beginning of the project sheet and are just modifications of the basic stitches.  Don’t be intimidated by the Intermediate Level tag – you can do this.

Total time on dress:  17 hours (including winding the yarn into balls, and sewing down the snowflakes.

Total Cost of Materials: $18.00 for 4 skeins of yarn

Your little girl is going to need to wear at least a shirt under this dress.  The top part of the dress is open mesh and will hide nothing.  The skirt and overskirt are thick enough you can’t see anything if they don’t wear shorts – unless their panties are neon glow in the dark green maybe.

Tips & Tricks

Yarn: 

• I made the size for a 22 chest.  Honestly I needed 1 skein of each and had more than a half of each color left over.  I bought the Periwinkle to make the flowers like it said to but when it came to actually attaching the flowers I didn’t like the way it looked and made my flowers out of the multi colored skein.  I skipped the Boutique yarn all together. *So if you want to save some money on the yarn skip the Periwinkle and Boutique yarns. You won’t even miss them.
• If you plan on making the crown and wand you won’t need to buy a whole extra skein of the yarns.  You will have enough left over to make them with the yarn you buy for this project. You will need the extra yarn if your going to make the matching bag though.

Sizing:

• When you measure your little girl’s chest, first put the tape around the widest part of their chest where it sits comfortably.  Then make them take 2 deep breaths and bend over and touch their toes.  If the tape measure moves to a bigger number use that number.  Nothing is going to be more upsetting for everyone involved than if you spend the time to make it and it doesn’t fit.
• Make sure to check the work on your little girl as you go.  Hold the first sleeve up to their arm and make sure it is long enough.  When you make the head opening try that on to make sure their head goes through easy (I had to add 2 rows for it to fit over Mermaid’s head). When you are making the skirt check that the length is as long as you want it.  Sure it gives you a length to shoot for but what if your girl is short or tall? Just measure to make sure it is perfect.

Edging OverSkirt:  I didn’t like how the overskirt stayed bunched up when I finished it.  So I added a hdc edge all around to weigh it down.  Bonus – it makes the overskirt look slightly ruffled.  If you would like to put this edging on your dress join white yarn with a slip stitch to the top center of the overskirt at the top of the bodice.  In each opening on the side put 10 hdc around the chain.  In each space along the bottom edge put 15 hdc in each.  Repeat with 10 hdc in each space up the second side. Finish the very last space with 9 hdc and 1 sc.  Sl St in joining stitch to finish off.

In the pictures below the one on the left is the way the overskirt is written (without the snowflakes sewn on).  The one on the right is the same overskirt just with the added edging to weigh it down (and the snowflakes of course.)

Edging Sleeves:  I wanted a more finished look on the sleeves as well.  So I joined the white with a SL St to the underside of the arm and did 2 hdc in each opening.

 

Buttons:  I didn’t add extra edging to the neck but I did add some buttons.  Because I had to make the head opening larger the dress started slipping off her shoulders.  To fix this I found two large white buttons and attached them to the shoulder with regular sewing thread.  If you do this make sure your buttons will easily fit through the mesh of the top.  When we were shopping for the white buttons Mermaid saw the big silver one and thought it needed to go in the center of the overskirt on her belly.  I have no idea where she got the idea but she was so cute trying to explain it in the craft store a group of ladies who were also buying buttons wanted to buy the button for her.  You know because she needed it.

Snowflakes:

Like I said in the Yarn section I didn’t like the look of the Periwinkle snowflakes.  So I made 5 snowflakes in the multicolored yarn.  I spaced them around so I was satisfied with only 5 of them.  The pattern also said to just glue down the center and let them be floppy. Bless my OCD little heart that could never happen.  I sewed them down. The easiest way for you to do that is to leave a 10 inch tail at the beginning and use that to sew down the center of the star.  Leave a 25 inch tail at the end and use that to tack the corners.  I tacked the low point of each star, threaded the yarn up the chain sides and then tacked the top as well.  If you use the multicolored yarn you don’t have to be careful when you thread up the chains because it will just blend in.  (The picture on the left is so you can see how your snowflake should look.  The one on the right is a close up of the 2 I sewed to the front of her dress.)

 

 

That is it my friends.  Now go get stitchy and make one for the little girls in your life.