Way back in 2008, sugar city journal posted this:

The Village Frock, click image to go to original post.
And I was in love. I have always wanted one for Theya. And one for myself. Matching ones. Or not. Maybe a few each. One made into a jacket. For each of us.
At the time I didn’t have any money to spend on patterns and now that I’ve been reconsidering, the pattern is out of print and, after contacting the site, I found out there are no plans to reprint or otherwise publish it. I was seriously bummed.
Then it got my wheels turning, I had my heart set on it. I have a pretty good grasp of sewing and how it all works and comes together. So I gave it a go last week, using some vintage-pattern quilting cotton from the thrift store and a pair of linen pants that went through the dryer too many times and are now too short for me -and making a small one for Theya because, hey, it potentially means less fabric wastage if I fail miserably.
I think I did alright, actually.

My first attempt at duplicating the pattern.
It’s a bit big on her but that’s always a good thing with kids, it’ll last longer. Theya loves it and wore it to school today. I’m pretty pumped about making a few more (and the next one will be my size).
I really, really suck at pattern-making. I alter the shit out of things as I go along and also make up stuff at the last moment, which sometimes fails and sometimes works but I don’t necessarily remember which. I need to take notes, I think. And photos. In any case, it really was pretty intuitive and, assuming you know the basics of sewing, I’ll tell you what I did (with some links to examples just in case).
- First, take a good look at the frock (here). Print it off, too. Notice that it’s made with raglan sleeves, a gathered yoke & sleeves, and some trim for the top & sleeve hems.
- Then I worked with this wonderful, wonderful pattern. SOOO easy. This is what I used to make Theya’s First Day Of School Dress and her Crazy Fancy Night Dress.
- I cut the cotton print out with a lower neckline (I shortened the sleeves and front & back by about an inch -from the top), to make room for the yoke.
- I sewed the sleeves and front & back together and trimmed the top to make it a nice smooth curve all the way around. (Inside of sleeves and sides were not sewn shut yet.)
- I measured the TOTAL width of what I had at that point -around the neck/yoke area. I THINK I had about 16″ (so 32″ all around). I cut the legs of the linen pants into curved strips (so they’d curve evenly when gathered) and once they were strung together, it was about 22″ across (44″ around). I did the same with the sleeves, but I don’t remember the dimensions.
- Then I sewed them into ruffles (basic idea/tutorial is here) and made sure the finished gathered sections were the same width as the neck of the tunic and the sleeves.
- The sleeves were a cinch to assemble. I added the ruffle section, then used a narrow strip of cotton to the hem for a neat finish and tie it all together. Once both sides were done, I closed up the sides of the dress (sew along the inside of the sleeves and down the sides of the tunic, per the raglan dress pattern).
- The top was trickier. I considered using my new best friend (FOE) around the yoke so I wouldn’t need buttons but that seemed like cheating and I didn’t have a length of FOE that would match, anyway. So, I cut a slit in the existing tunic on the right side (chose arbitrarily), then sewed the linen, gathered yoke around and finished the hem with a length of scrap linen (didn’t want the cotton trim there, dunno why, just didn’t).
- Oh yeah, you can see in this photo that there is an extra, ungathered section of linen RIGHT in the middle of the front of the yoke. That is an example of me screwing up. It’s not terribly obvious, I might embroider something there, if it bugs me enough, or I may just leave it. Once I had it sewn around most of the way I realized I had mis-measured and it was going to be short an inch or so, so I just added a section BUT didn’t make it long enough to gather
well at all, so… whatever. I did like the way it curved around neatly and evenly, so yes, definitely cut the strips in a curve for the yoke section (the ruffled for the sleeves were cut from straight rectangle strips).
- It was starting to look pretty darn awesome, but I still had to add the trim around the slit and the button loops. In the original photo (from SCJ), it looks SO neat, but I wasn’t sure how she pulled it off and I was tired but wanted it done so I just did a simple strip of linen around the front edge, flipped it around and sewed it down (rolled hem) on the inside then made rolled hem strips for the button loops & tacked them to the back side.
- The buttons are from the linen pants (they had the rolled-up-capri option so there were a lot of extra buttons on the legs) -hence the perfect match. Once it was put together, I sort of didn’t like the colour combination. It honestly made me think, “CLOWN” but not enough for me to toss it. I cut one of the pockets off the ass of the pants and cut what was more of a dress down into a shorter smock. Once it was hemmed and the pocket added, I liked it again. So I kept it.

She says it's VERY comfortable.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with it, but I think it would look better in a solid colour (and the whole thing the same fabric, or at least the same fabric but in different shades). I am tempted to try dying the whole thing crimson and seeing how it turns out, if the colours tie together better -but then the buttons may not match. It would look better if it fit Theya better, too, I think. I also think that the ruffles would look better if they were fuller, so I’d suggest outright doubling the circumference of the openings when measuring out the sections to be gathered. I was only going to use 4 or 5 buttons but the gaps looked funny so I went with as many as I could fit (7), maybe a section of fabric added to the right side of the slit that sat underneath the buttons would all for fewer buttons -without skin peeking through. The sleeves could be a wee less billowy, too.
So, in case you were wondering, there you have it. I am very keen to try making a jacket version of this, in some heavy-ish chenille jacquard I have, oh, just kicking around. Longish (body and sleeves extended) for me, with buttons all the way down the body -but spaced out more or it would make me crazy putting it on and taking it off. OH! And a huge, gorgeous hood. I’ll post photos if/when it happens. For sure.
YES, Theya has no hair!! She was so fed up with the ordeal of keeping her fine curls under control, she asked for, “a boy haircut.” Once I pointed out that we could probably donate her hair to make wigs for cancer patients (and I made her think about it for a week to be REALLY sure), she was sold. She loves it so much and gosh, I can’t blame her, that girl has the eyes (and face) for a pixie cut -she ROCKS it.