Lately, I've been needing to wear my glasses. I survived for more than a year without needing to wear my glasses but now that my eyes get strained too much with the projects that I am currently making. I have shared a few progress shots of the Beauty and the Beast inspired gown I am making. But right now, I am working on a quick project, not to take a break, but because it was requested by a neighbor of mine, for a commission, of course. * wink *
Because I don't want to experiment with any new designs, I showed a couple of pegs for my cute little client and got approval from her mom for this design. It's cute, it's very simple, and best of all, it's free. So I went ahead and started the baby dress. I haven't really gone that far with the pattern, the mom messaged me and showed me pictures of baby boots and bonnets. And they also wanted another dress made for her 5-year-old niece. So my little project quickly turned into a slightly bigger one.
I am not really sure about the pricing, so before I actually started, I contacted 
There have been a lot of discussions and threads about how crocheters should charge for their craft. A lot needs to be considered: materials, skills, time consumed for the work, miscellaneous, and of course, the market. One may want to price the craft really steep but of course, the skill should match the value. And besides, your potential client may just look for other crocheters. One will need to balance that. Since Jonalyn has been selling wearables for a long time, I trusted her to eyeball the price for me.
Before I sent the quote to my client, I was really anxious. But at one side, if they decline, then that would mean I'll have more time to work on the gown. If they accept, then more monies for me! And they happily made the deal, no questions asked. She was even the one rationalizing that crocheting is difficult and that it required skills to finish one item.
And so I continued on with the project. At first, the pattern did not make sense to me. All because I am a visual learner, I need to see photos and illustrations first before the patterns make sense to me. But what the heck, I need to complete one so that I can move on to the next.
It's okay if it does not make sense in the beginning. Soon, the project you are working on will come to light while you work. Most of the time, this works for me. And luckily, it worked for me on this project. Haha!
I just went on making HDCs for two rounds, then just follow the instructions to make shells. At that point of the project, the image was clear for me to see. I don't want to rush this project, I just want to make sure that I am doing the right thing on every row. This is the first time I am commissioning a wearable so this has to be perfect.
Before I knew it, I noticed I am almost done with the baby dress. It pays to have the right hook for the right yarn. As usual, I am using an 8 ply polyester yarn which surprisingly has a very soft texture. I normally use my tapered hooks for any yarn, but since this project is special, I used my bamboo hook which I remembered was inline. Perfect for the 8ply yarn. My work time was reduced by so much time because I did not have to frog and restitch over and over again. If you've used 4-8 ply yarns, you know what I'm talking about. Sure the bamboo hook gave me a small splinter on my finger, but that's a very small price to pay for the convenience it gave me.
I knew I'll have some struggles with the sizing because the part of any pattern where it says the type of yarn and the hook size is often the part that I ignore. I would usually work the pattern using the yarns and hooks that I have and will adjust the number of stitches according to the size I am trying to achieve. So for this part, I borrowed one of little baby girl's shirts just to make sure that the dress I'll make will fit her.
Seeing that little baby shirts made me miss my daughter's old baby clothes. As I look at her, I wondered where have the years gone by? She's a big girl now. And a sassy, witty, little big girl at that. LOL
Right now, I'll just be weaving ends off, stitch the straps firmly into place, and then I'll be moving on to the booties and bonnet. It may be that my client is really cute and her mom is a delight to talk to that I don't feel any stress at all while completing the project. I just feel so excited and want to see the little baby wear my creation soon.
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