It's All About the Clothes

There are baby clothes and there are Baby Clothes... and I like to think every woman alive knows the difference. If the baby is merely generic -- the brand new baby of your boss's assistant's sister and you've somehow been squeezed onto the Baby Shower Guest List then what you do is drop by a store, any store, on the way to the shower and pick up something. You hope the same store sells those handy gift bags. Had you thought about it, which you didn't, you'd have dug a bag out of the back of a closet.

But if the baby is SPECIAL -- the long awaited infant of your best friend, dearest neighbor or a close co-worker who has saved your bacon a time or two -- then you do one of two things... you go to the best store in town select the most exquisite scrumptious enchanting baby outfit you have ever seen in your entire life, take out a loan and buy it. Or you sew.

I'm not sure sewing for baby holds it's own against a mortgaged romper from Too Suite Enfant Emporium... but it should. Because when I sew for baby, it is a Big Freakin' Deal. There is the selecting of the pattern, the Deciding on Fabric... fabric alone is an event for which I'd like to see gold medal standards. The fabric can not be too tough or too delicate. It can not be infused with fire retardant, spit-up deterrent chemicals. Unless the baby is already here and you know the gender, then the color must be sufficiently androgynous. Next you cut out all the impossibly tiny pieces -- those people who sew doll clothes, Barbie clothes, are clearly deranged. And never mind the pieces being so small -- there are all the sewing notions -- zippers, buttons, snaps... all or any of which are tiny and fiddly and you need to think through this part because that mortgaged gown will start looking really good when you are fussing with a half inch button hole. Yes, yes, there is velcro which is mightily handy and too bad the hook part of this brilliant invention is too scratchy to risk stitching into a baby gown.

This is the one and only time in your life when you will sew French seams. And no matter how careful you are, if you are very lucky, at minimum a half inch of one seam will hang out and there you will have to decide whether to rip it out and begin again or keep right on stitchin' with hope the mother will never notice... hmmmmm.

Sometimes I sew baby clothes because there are things you just can't buy any more. They don't sell kimonos or sacks like they used to and for a brand new baby fresh from a bath and ready for a late snack followed by a diaper change, there's nothing easier on and off and back on again than a kimono. But usually when I sew baby clothes it is the Show Off variety. The clothes with pin tucks and ruching and cut work and embellishments I can't pronounce and have to focus through crossed eyes to actually do.

But when the baby is Special, (not "this will get me a raise" special -- but Dear to My Heart Special, "I will Watch You and Protect You" Special... ) it makes me feel a little special too, to pull out the stops, knowing that I can, knowing that I will.... I like to think also that somewhere in the brain of the child who wears a home sewn gown there is a seed of awareness... something in his head absorbs the fact, Mm, "French seams... nice." And there it is -- THAT's the difference.