clothes for the size-skewing

[thanate]

I've spent a moderate (ok, large for me) amount of time wandering around malls doing maternity & baby reconnaissance and determined that infant clothes come in boy-specific, girl-specific, and white, and that the only maternity-specific garment I liked was a little above that day's mental price threshold. Grauwulf asks (not unreasonably) why I even bothered to look if I wasn't willing to pay $35 for a blouse that I can wear this winter and would probably continue to wear thereafter. Having discovered that the maternity mall shops are as uninspiring as the pattern books, the idea that I was looking for inspiration kind of falls flat... I've so far picked up four pairs of wearable pants at thrift stores (for under $20 total) but the cute blouse selection is much slimmer. I suspect that I am not the only one looking for tops that I will want to keep around post-pregnancy.

As for the pattern companies... well, McCalls technically has a symbol for patterns that "can be adapted for maternity" which as far as I could tell is used on about two blouses; Simplicity doesn't admit to anything, nor do any of their sister companies; and Butterick has about five patterns stuffed in the "Mens/Unisex/Sleepwear" section, one of which is actually cute, but I haven't managed to catch them on sale. As for baby patterns, there are five or six of them in seven or eight different permutations, almost all of which are theoretically girl clothes. (also, what is with the baby butt ruffles?)

Anyway, while I'd like a pants pattern just in case, I'm not too worried about them given the thrift store selection thus far, and I'm set for long dresses until I can't stand those anymore, but what I want more of (and actually have been wanting more of for... possibly almost a decade now? and have mostly not gotten around to making) is things in the blouse/babydoll dress line. Reasonably fitted shoulders & bust, looser below that (obviously), hemmed somewhere between hip- and knee-length. I've got a couple commercial patterns along these lines, and a diagram of the rectangles for a proper smock. Does anyone have any recommendations for historic styles/ patterns that I could adapt? I know regency or Italian Ren can have about the right shape, but I don't really know what's out there in terms of patterns or garment guides that are worth looking at, or what else might work for the right look. Suggestions? Bonus-points if it can be made to work well for nursing, too.

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Meanwhile, People I Know are off to have a fabulous time at Worldcon, and I am vaguely wistful that I don't actually want to go. But I don't, and so I have not spent today battling airport nonsense to get to Chicago. (I just get to fight the Grand Prix road closures to get into Baltimore for my volunteer shifts instead.)

Comments

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Ooh, some of those are rather nicer. Thanks; I'll keep an eye on them.

I'm not opposed to pink or frilly in moderation; I just want the bulk of the baby clothing to be suitable for handing down to a mismatched sibling or cousin or friend later on, instead of trying to imprint the child on "this is your colorset because you are [gender]."

Of course, if I find out I'm having a girl, I am totally going out in search of one of the 18" Merida dolls to keep in trust for her, so it's possible there's a limit to my idealistic principles.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In my memory, my mom and grandma dressed me in pink all the time when I was little. But when I look at the photos, there were little blue overalls, a little grey dress, a shorts set that was red and yellow and blue primary colors...there were lots of things that weren't constantly pink. It just wasn't like it is now, where I saw a ring-stacking toy in shades of pink, because God forbid any aspect of a girl's life be non-pink.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

The earliest garment I actually remember owning was a pale pink wool dress, and it is followed in my young affections by the pair of pink satin high-tops that I somehow managed to talk my mother into buying for me in second grade. I think they fit me for about two weeks before I outgrew them (after which my My Pet Monster wore them for a while), but I still have the horribly tacky rainbow shoelaces. However, in all the baby pictures I can remember I'm wearing dark green or yellow.

I think I'm just offended because there is not a multi-pack of onesies in bright rainbow colors next to the white ones. Because really, who in their right mind puts unrelieved white on a creature of diaper and spit-up age? I'm hoping the thrift store selection will be better, but there's no point in looking until they start putting out things with long sleeves.

The thought did occur to me, though, to wonder if there's any connection between girls being better at distinguishing colors, and being inundated with red-spectrum at the age where they can't distinguish blue-tones yet. (Probably not, but it's not un-suggestive that men stopped being culturally allowed to be foppish about colors around the time when the pink/blue genderswitch happened. Also, clearly the world needs more crackpot theories of an entirely frivolous nature!)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing about white is that it can be bleached. So in old-fashioned terms before good detergent, it was far more practical for babies than colors, because the colors were going to end up stained and couldn't be bleached.

We do not live in those times.

And yes. Bright rainbow colors. Seriously.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Even if I were to make my child frilly white dresses with tiny little glass buttons, I would still soak them in biz/oxyclean to get stains out.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And for newborns it makes even less sense, because for newborns you're going to be really careful to use a detergent that isn't going to make them break out, because of them being new to this whole world thing. And bleach? Is so not that.