I’ve got a lovely old pattern for a dress for a little girl. I want to make the smallest size, for a 24inch chest measurement (that’d be 60cm). The yarn is (was) Villawool Avanti with a tension of 6 stitches to the inch (that would be 24 stitches to 10cm) on the old UK/Aust no 8 needles (I think that’s 4mm or US no 6).
So that sounds like an 8 ply/DK/sport weight? yarn, I think? The pattern says 9 balls, but I don’t know what size those balls would have been. Here most yarn comes in either 50g or 100g balls, but I think 50g is more common. (50g is about 1.75oz.) Would it be reasonable to assume I could go with 9 x 50g balls?
I would think 9 balls of 50 g would be fine for most baby dresses but it really depends on several things.
Long sleeves, short sleeves, no sleeves? Long dress, short dress? Full skirt, straight skirt, a line skirt? If it were long sleeved, AND had a really gathered skirt, AND was a long dress, then you might start to run into problems.
To give you an idea… here is a dress from GARN studios free patterns. It’s a longish dress with no sleeves. Their 6-9 month size, which seems to match the chest size you are talking about, uses 300 grams (and that’s because it has two yarns… might be a little less if it were all one yarn).
This dress is done on 4.5mm needles and looser gauge… so it will use less yarn than the one you have. It also has a relatively straight skirt. A fuller skirt can add a fair amount of yarn. And, no sleeves. You might find a dress on the Garn site similar to the one you want to make in construction and see if that helps.
Of course, sorry. It’s not really a baby dress, I’m thinking it’s about a six-year-old. It’s a simple short A-line dress with short sleeves, all in one yarn.
This pattern in a similar size (but with no sleeves) uses 10 balls of 50g, but then it is two different yarns… So maybe I should get 10 of whatever I choose, just in case.