Bibs for Babies

I am not going to have anymore babies on purpose (knock on wood), so it's a source of sadness to me sometimes that I didn't become the hyper-engaged crafter that I am today until after my second baby was born.

Think of all the blankies that I missed out on sewing for my own babes. The baby gowns! The rompers! The Boppy covers! The cloth stacking rings! The little hats! The diaper covers! The mei tais! All the weensy little things, sewn by me, just for my baby, and I get to put them on her, and look at her all super-cute, and take her picture, because in this fantasy I'm also not half-functioning under a fog of exhaustion.

Suffice to say...

I sort of have a thing for sewing presents for other people's babies. 

A few weeks ago, there was a perfect storm of babies being born. My half-sister had a baby, and a friend here in town had a baby, and a co-worker a couple of states over had a baby.

I got to sew little baby presents in batches! 

It totally beat to hell the sympathy cards that I had to write in batches a couple of months ago.

And what's great for batch sewing for babies?

Bibs, that's what!

I used my old pattern for these T-shirt bibs that I made, gasp!, almost five years ago, to make bibs for all the new babies. I really, really liked the look of the T-shirt bibs, especially the tie-dyed ones, but I'm trying to sew from my stash this year (have I mentioned that the girls and I are undertaking another epic road trip in a couple of months? Hershey World, here we come!), and I have lots of lovely quilting cottons in my stash.

So I ironed interfacing to both pieces of fabric, sewed them and turned them and edge-stitched them--

--stopped to admire them in a can't-stop-beaming-at-them way that totally disturbed poor Matt when he happened to walk by and catch me at it--

--snap set them, monogrammed them, forgot to take pictures of them, and gave them to babies. Two sets were mailed, and one set was given in person, along with that fabric matching game big siblings present that caused me so much grief.

As I was chatting with my friends that day, including the new mom, we were talking about my "baby presents in batches" thing, and I confessed that I actually had yet another long-distance friend who had just had another baby, but they weren't getting another baby present, because they hadn't acknowledged the last one.

"Oh, you're one of THOSE people," the new mom said, probably half-operating under her own fog of exhaustion and contemplating a future of having to snap a bib around the neck of the baby currently at her breast and show it to me as yet another chore to complete before she could catch her entire hour in a row of sleep that night.

I said, "OH yeah, I'm one of those people! The only reason on this Earth why someone would make someone else's baby a gift by hand is that they want to see the damn baby WITH their gift. The whole time they're knitting a little baby hat or sewing a blankie or whatever, they're thinking, 'That little baby is going to look so cute in this hat/blankie/onesie whatever! I can't wait to see it!' So yeah, if the person that you made a baby gift for receives the gift, throws it in the baby's dresser, and gets on with their life, gift unacknowledged, it kind of kills the point of making them another baby gift. Their new kid needs some bibs? They can go to Wal-mart--they don't have to personally thank the sweat shop workers there."

And that's how I probably took the flavor out of one new mom's zest for receiving gifts for all her current and future children. Just please remember that I never have claimed to be one of those good person-type thingies. 

I just like making stuff for babies.