Hard time interpreting wedding dress pattern

Hiya everybody,

My fiancée found a pattern for a dress that she’s very excited to make for our wedding, but has been having a hard time interpreting parts of it (Possibly partly because the pattern isn’t originally written in English). She’s also having a hard time figuring out how much yarn to buy for it: people who have made it have reported using anywhere from 2,500 yards to over 6,000. She hasn’t worked from patterns much before, and has never made a project this big before, so she’s feeling pretty nervous about it all round.

I don’t know if it’s appropriate to post images of a paid pattern in a forum, but would it be okay to post sections that she’s confused by, and would anyone mind clarifying them for her?

Second question, about estimating total yardage: I’ve never knitted, but would it make sense to count up all the stitches, do a test swatch to figure out the stitches per yard with the weight of yarn and stitch she’s using (I think the pattern just uses one basic stitch, pretty much), and then divide the total stitches in the pattern by the stitches per yard in her test to get a rough total yardage?

Hope that all made sense. Thank you so much for any help you can offer!

Welcome to KH and congratulations on the upcoming wedding!

Thank you for thinking of designer copyright restrictions. You can post a few lines of the part where there is a problem. That’s ok to do. It’s also helpful to have the name and designer of the pattern.
You’re on the right track as far as estimating yardage. Do a test swatch, measure the area and either weigh the swatch or rip it out and measure yardage. Estimate the total area of the dress. She could use a dress she already has that is similar to estimate total area. This will necessarily be a rough number but close. See if the yardage falls within the large range of previous knitters.
(Is it possible that some used yarn doubled to make the dress?)
It’s a good idea to buy a couple of extra balls of yarn over the estimate, just in case. It saves running out of yarn at the end.
The test swatch has the added benefit of helping determine the needle needed to work the dress, and the drape and feel of the final knit fabric.

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Thanks so much! She wound up finding another similar pattern that was much clearer (and had a more precise yardage estimate), but that’s a great suggestion for estimating projects, and I’m sure she’ll use it in the future. And we’ll definitely get those extra yarn balls.

So grateful to have found such a helpful, welcoming community, and I’m sure this’ll be our first stop if she runs into any troubles on the project.

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What an exciting project! I hope we get to see a photo.

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Excellent! I’m sure it will all go well but if a problem comes up, please come back and we can work it out together. We wish you all the best

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