Waves and Wild Penelope Pinafore review

Sep 9

Sep 9 Waves and Wild Penelope Pinafore

I bought this Penelope Pinafore pattern a while ago when Waves and Wild shut down her shop (although things are still for sale). I’d previously made the kids version of the dungarees for Ellis, so I knew they were good.

This pattern is obviously very similar to the Lucy and Yak dungaree dresses, so I was going to enter them into a recreate the look challenge on instagram, but it turns out L&Y don't actually sell them any more, weird. Anyway!

The fabric is print on demand from Minerva, on the needlecord base. The print is Doodle Dreams from the Tammy Handmade collaboration. It's cotton, a nice weight and it presses well, but it being printed onto a white base does mean you can see the wee white stripes in between as the fabric stretches out, and you can see the white bits being trapped at the edge for the pockets too.

I also had a machine washing malfunction when I first washed this, and it ended up sitting in the undrained machine for half a day, and once we finally released all the water I decided to hang it up wet, which turned out to be a mistake. We have a ceiling pulley and the fabric ended up with a big long line completely pulled out of shape all the way across where it was sitting on the pulley bar. Luckily I'd asked for enough fabric for the midi version of the dress, and by changing to the mini, I was able to cut the main pieces on either side of the deformed line.

There was also a bit of bleeding of the dye onto the back of the fabric, although thankfully nothing you can see from the front.

As I mentioned, there's a midi and a mini length, and there's also an option to do a button front, side buttons, an slit at the back, and a choice of three ways to attach the straps. I went for the loops, Lucy and yak style. I made the size L, graded to an XL at the hips. It's fairly fitted, I'm happy with this but maybe something to consider if you'd like it to be a looser fit.