HennyPenny's favourite makes - Promise dress

When I first saw the Promise dress by Heather of H G Designs Crochet, I absolutely fell in love! It was retro but fresh, colourful but with an edge and Heather absolutely rocked the look.

If you haven't heard of Heather before, she is a crochet designer who uses granny squares to make modern clothing designs (you can find her on Instagram and she has a podcast on YouTube too).

I was very lucky to get to test the design before it was released. I've only tested a couple of things before and each time I worry I won't be able to complete it in time but once I started, this dress just flew off the hook. It's so simple and for the most part very portable so it was quick to make the squares and compulsive to whizz through the different colours and get to the joining part. The instructions for joining are straightforward and it wasn't long before I could try it on! I think the best kind of designs are those you can try on as you go and see how they look.

Do you get joy just from looking at granny squares too?

The yarn used to make the original Promise was Acrylic DK but I chose to use my own hand dyed DK yarn (75% Superwash Merino, 25% Nylon) as I wanted to be able to wear the dress in the future at yarn fairs (once the world returns to normal). As I love crochet blankets, I like to have a good selection of DK mini skeins in the shop at all times - the semi solids are also good for colourwork jumpers and socks - and they were great for this dress as I was able to make a colourful rainbow dress without lots of left over yarn. I tried to pick a selection that would give me a rainbow but in a manageable way so I focused on colour squares (blue, green etc) and used three different minis to make each set. I made size 3 of the dress and used a total of 34 mini skeins in total - 8 x 3 for the coloured squares and then 2 extras to make the multicoloured squares to fill in. I then joined them all using my semi solid charcoal colour called Darkfur.

You can find the ready to ship DK mini skeins here

This was one of those projects that goes so quickly that you're delighted you've finished so fast but then a little sad too, as it's all over! The happiness flooded back when I tried on Promise - it's the happiest dress ever and just makes you want to show it off. A match made in heaven!

I hope you can go and make your own Promise - I think it would suit pretty much any colour combination and you could make it unique to you, especially when you dress it up or down.

Happy crafting!