Little Mother Dress - Crochet For Small Fry 1944

This is an instance where the naming of vintage patterns irks me a little. We may come across more as we go through the 50s and beyond where the pattern names range from getting a little side-eye from me to actually being considered offensive. In this case, it's a throw back to not only the parentification of children but also the idea that little girls should aspire to be mothers and nothing else. Maybe if they'd called this the Little President Dress we'd have had a female president.

On to the list of materials. This pattern says you need 3 balls of Knit-Cro-Sheen, a steel hook size 6 and 4 buttons. I used Knit Picks Curio size 10 thread in the color Bahama, a size 6 hook and four buttons I found in my button box. Curio thread comes in balls of 721 yards. Knit-Cro-Sheen comes in balls that are 175 yds each so I thought I would only need 525 yards but I needed every yard of the Curio ball. 

This pattern gives a gauge and finished measurements. Getting the gauge was fairly easy but I did check often. They start out with a measurement for a chain and a stitch count and after the struggle on the pinafore I wanted to make sure I didn't have to pull out a lot of stitches. Once you get through the yoke and start working on the dress it's a very simple stitch pattern that was easy to remember. There is an extra button band crocheted on along with some edging on the sleeves. This was a fairly easy thing to make but it seemed like it took forever. It actually took me about three weeks working on it off and on. I had to switch to something else occasionally because the combination of the thread and the triple crochet stitches made my hand hurt.

Here's the finished dress. It measures pretty close to the finished measurements they gave. Length from shoulder to bottom of skirt is 13.5 inches and they wanted 14 inches. I could have blocked it a little more to eke out that last half inch. The width at the hem should be 42 inches and mine is 40 inches. Again, I could have blocked it more aggressively but it's pretty cute the way it is.

How did this one rate:
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Is the pattern easy to understand? Mostly, there was a part that just said "Band" with no other indication of what it was for. I assumed it was for the sleeves - it wanted you to work 3 rounds of single crochet holding the work in to measure 6.5 inches. That seemed like a sleeve measurement. I'll give it a 1.0 anyway.
Does it look like the photo or drawing? There wasn't one but there was a gauge so I'll give this a 0.75 instead of the 0.50 patterns with no photos get.
Would someone wear this? Yes. 1.0
Did I enjoy making it? Yes 1.0

Total is 3.75