Project One : Sunsuit for a Giant Baby

Giant Baby in a Giant Sunsuit

This came about for a couple of reasons. I'm not the sort of person that makes clothes for humans, simply because buying fabric is more expensive by far than buying clothes. This may not be true in other countries but in Australia it is definitely the case.

 I got a shock when the baby started needing a size one. All the places that I shop for the baby have babywear up to a size two and kidswear that starts at size one, so I was looking forward to size one, I thought I would have a lot more choice. But it doesn't work that way. Because, of the places I shop for the baby, there is almost no babywear larger than a size 0 and almost no kidswear smaller than a size 3! For every five racks of clothing there will be maybe one individual item in a size 1 or 2! Which means instead of going "Oooo! That's cute! I'll buy that!" or "That's cheap! I'll buy that!", shopping for the baby is now a case of "Well, that exists, I guess I have to get it." And even still, two months later he only has about a quarter of the amount of clothes he had in every other size. (And about half of that is a size too small)

 But when I was eight months pregnant I went insane. I looked through the things we had prepared for the baby and got ridiculously upset because I had only bought fitted sheets for his cot. In real life I had done that on purpose, all the advice at the moment seems to be to put babies to bed with just a fitted sheet and a sleep bag. (We use Gro-bags and I love them.) But pregnant me forgot this and promptly went out and bought three matching manchester sets for the cot. Fitted sheet, flat sheet and pillowcase, one even has a matching blanket. So, I decided to make sunsuits out of the flat sheets.

Sunsuit pattern

 The pattern I used is from an Enid Gilchrist pattern book. These were released in Australia, first by the Argus newspaper (which no longer exists) and later by New Idea (a woman's magazine), from the late 1940s through to the 1980s. Although the clothes in the 1980s ones look funny because the patterns are all designed for woven fabric but for some reason the samples they've photographed all seem to be made from t-shirt material. I haven't said which book it's from because of the ones I have, this pattern is in most of them.

 These patterns all include seam allowances but since our baby is a Giant Baby, I pretended they didn't and cut the leg holes a little bit bigger. Also I ignored the suggested trimming and cut the appliques off the sheets I was using and used those to trim the front. 

 I made one right away and he's gotten a fair amount of use out of it, but I started making a second one and it's still sitting on my desk half finished. Why? Because I ran out of hammer on press studs and couldn't find anywhere that sold them so I could buy more. Because I think sew on press studs look messy on human clothes. (I have no issue with using them on doll clothes.) And I still haven't learnt how to make button holes.

 I've decided finishing the second sunsuit will be my first project. Otherwise by the time I finish it it will be too cold to wear it and the baby will have grown out of it anyway. At the moment, as I see it, I have two choices - I can learn to make buttonholes (they can't be that hard, my sewing machine does them automatically, and I really should know how to do this by now.) OR I can cheat by using sew on press studs and just sew buttons on the outside over where the press studs are sewn on to cover the stitches. I'm not sure which I am going to do yet.