It’s prom season on Cute Crochet World! Oh my–if only the prom dresses of Earth were as easy and inexpensive to make as the prom dresses of Cute Crochet World! Our bank accounts would be a lot fatter.
While humans can’t necessarily wear this dress from Cute Crochet World the book (“Dress-Up Time,” pp. 122-123), you might want to make one or more anyway, using the step-by-step photos below to supplement the instructions in the book.
BUT FIRST
Some Cute Ideas for Using this Pretty Dress-Up Dress
- Photograph the dress. Use your digital camera photo software to cut the dress from from the background (I use the magnetic lasso tool on Adobe Photoshop Elements). Paste into a word processing document and create after-prom party invitations.
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Color photocopy the dress, enlarging or reducing it to the appropriate size for your project. Again, cut the dress from the background, paste onto a printed party invitation. Then you can make multiple color copies from this original.
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Use the dress itself for a prom memories scrapbook page.
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Crochet it with very fine thread and use it to decorate a picture frame.
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Pin to your bulletin board.
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Make a Prom Dress Doily from the pattern in Love of Crochet, Summer 2016. See this post.
Step-by-Step Photos
Start crocheting the dress from the waist down. The photo above shows Row 1 of the Skirt done, and Row 2 started. Row 2 instructs you to “dc in the first dc,” indicated by the yellow line. The turning ch-3 usually counts as the stitch in the first st, but since we’re increasing, this stitch will now have two stitches in it.
Row 4 is all picots, worked in the back loop only. This is what a finished Row 4 looks like. The yellow lines are pointing to the front loops, which haven’t been worked yet. When you turn the piece after Row 4, these front loops will become back loops. Row 5 is worked into the back loops.
Row 8 is finished here, and I am joining color B to the first stitch with a tr. To do this, place a slip knot on the hook (as if you were starting a project), yo twice, draw up a loop in the first st (4 loops on hook), and finish the tr. I like starting a new color this way, because it looks better to me than joining with a sl st and chaining.
The skirt is finished, and I’m starting back at the waist, looking at the right side of the skirt, and joining color A with a hdc.
To make the cap sleeve, chain as instructed (top photo) and make two picots to define the sleeve (lower photo). At this point, you will skip the picots and make the first st in the next ch, which is indicated by the yellow line.
The hdc-decrease pulls the sleeve upward.
After the neck shaping, place a marker as instructed in the pattern.
For the first sleeve, the chain formed the outside edge of the sleeve. For this sleeve, the chain forms the inside or upper edge of the sleeve. The yellow line shows where to place the first st after the picots. The shaping is slightly different, to make it symmetrical with the other sleeve.
And finish the sleeve and the top of the dress with a sl st in the stitch you marked earlier.
The corsage is pretty simple. To reduce bulk, make a ring with the yarn. Work into the ring, then tighten the first yarn end to form the flower.
Whew! You can stop now, if you’re pleased with your dress. It looks sort of summery and informal. Read on if you prefer to add the drapes.
Here’s the drape, with Row 1 complete. Work Row 2 into the original chain, opposite of the stitches of Row 1, as shown by the yellow lines. They will actually mirror each other—hdc across from hdc, dc across from dc, and so on. (Htr how-to here.)
The long sewing length is at the lower end of the drapes. To keep them symmetrical, start the trim at the top of one drape and at the lower end of the other drape.
Arrange the drapes and sew in place.
Even after blocking, my picot rows tended to stand up, so this time, I sewed real pearls of plastic on each picot for an even fancier ball gown.
