Baby Sewing - 2 On the Way

Two babies on the way. Grand-nephew Calyn in late October (perhaps on grandfather or great grandfather's birthdays?). Granddaughter PIPER (or Naomi if her dad gets his way) in November, again due on her grandpa's birthday. So I am thinking baby sewing.

In the past month I've gathered several items - patterns, material, snaps, etc. And with a deadline of Sept 20 for my nieces baby shower, I'm going to have to get going on putting these together. I do have three outfits cut out, with the idea that I will just thread up blue and fly. I've got some consulting work to do this weekend, but whenever I have a few spare minutes, I'm cutting out.

In addition to the current patterns shown below, I have some out of print (year 2000 out of print) that I'll use as well Wish me all kinds of luck.

The Butterick pattern shown above is very cute - I especially love the little billed hat for a boy. And it is sized for wovens, not stretch as most baby items are. I'm making things from that!


I finally tracked down some baby pink and baby blue pinwale corduroy to make some coming home outfits. I love these bonnets up above, but I think Piper needs the pink and white one on the lower right. Don't you?

And Simplicity has some repro patterns out - 1948 and 1952. The one above is for felt booties with lots of cute embrodiery. They seem simple enough, and I might even be able to use the embrodiery stitches on my machine instead of doing it by hand. The one on the left below is a cute girls set of slip, dress, jacket/coat, booties and hat.


And then we get into the more contempory patterns. The overalls and coat above will be really cute in fleece, as will the baby sacks below. I think they do need some sort of applique to spark them up though.


OK, I am going to make one lament here. I'd love to make a Heirloom type outfit for Cal, but I feel like my neice wouldn't like that type of outfit - we'd get into discussions of the use of smocking or ric rack or lace or whatever. So I'm sticking with contemporary for Cal. But for Piper, I'm thinking Heirloom outfits are wonderful - and no one is going to complain about ruffles, lace, smocking, etc.

So where along the line in this world did we require that even newborns must follow a "sex role" - boys can only be dressed in pants (no nightgowns for them, no matter how easy that makes it for access) and without lace and furbelows? I think we miss something by demanding that, and put a lot of expectations onto that little bundle when they pop out of the womb. My father wore a dress for the first few years of his life, as did his father, etc., etc. And they turned out OK. Why the limitations??