A million years ago, pregnant with The Boy and not really having had much association with kids since the time when I was one, I conferred with all the checklists and newborn preparedness lessons and movies featuring seemingly-happy babes and came to the conclusion that we would need onesies. Lots and lots of onesies.
And for the first two or three months, that's all he wore. Oneseis and the iconic footed jammies. Then, personality started kicking in, revealing him to be stubborn and proud and prone to maniacal fits of the giggles. And, excited at the little man he was becoming, we started dressing him like one, which, in our interpretation, looked (and still looks) a lot like a frat boy. We've given him over to the layered look, stocking his dresser with t-shirts from our favorite establishments and indie radio stations, to be worn over a small collection of thermal shirts and lightweight hoodies, even when this Texan spring might suggest that a plain old tank top might be more fitting. For bottoms, he sports denims generally way cooler than anything his dad or I have ever worn. With pockets in absurd arrays and numbers. In short, he's a cool little dude.
So, when compiling the wardrobe for the not-yet-born-Girlie, we played it cautious, wary not to give in to too many items that might contradict her personality later on. There were, of course, the hand-me-downs and some irresistible little shifts in pink concentric circles. And the sewing machine made its own contributions of booties and bloomers and a couple of entirely-too-cute-for-everyday-wear dresses. And sure enough, nine months into her baby-life, that stuff has mostly given way to miniature versions of the clothes our tween-aged neighbor girls wear.
So, with good reason, I had thought that the bloomer-making days were past. And yet that's what I've been spending the last week's worth of sewing time doing. Maybe it's that it just prolongs her babyness, a period that seems to be flying by entirely too quickly this time around. It seems to be a daily occurrence that The Girlie makes some face or pulls herself up in some new way or gurgles out some new consonant that compels me to remark to Mr. New Media that I can't believe how big she's getting. Yes. It appears I've reached THAT stage of parenthood. But bloomers. Bloomers will keep her a baby longer.
And the best part about these bloomers (from this book), aside from their youth-preserving qualities? As with anything else you can sew for a baby, the amount of material necessary is small enough that it can be extracted from just about anything. Like beloved t-shirts, too ratty to function any longer as adult attire.
There are people out there, very talented sewists and purveyors of tutorials, who make the baseless assertion that jersey is deceptively easy to work with. Emphasis on the deception. I've used the elastic stitch function on my machine and varying iterations of the zig zag stitch, and combinations of the two, each time hoping something will click that will make that statement true. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, that the elastic stitch function does. So far as I can tell, its M.O. involves increasing the slowness and decibel level of the machine operation. But I've come to the conclusion that those jersey advocates out there are all either secretly working on sergers or are seriously delusional. Or perhaps both.
But, the draw of the t-shirt is strong. And, as I've come to learn, there is no sewing imperfection so heinous as to be un-concealable by judicious applications of elastic. Elastic being The Great Equalizer. Made from an old t-shirt that had seen heavy rotation through my high school years, and then banished to the sleepwear drawer once the holes started developing, these bloomers have become a favorite once again with a few short lengths of elastic. And they'll keep the prom dresses and dress slacks at bay for just a while longer.
