Five Crafty Little Dresses

It was my daughter’s first birthday last week, and in amongst the rush of seeing visiting relatives, starting back at work, getting my son back and forth to school for his first full-time week and taking the baby off to starter sessions at nursery, I did occassionally stop and think about what I would have been doing this time last year.

In the days preceeding her birth, I spent an awful lot of my time lying on the sofa, feeling anxious that the baby would be late, and generally wanting to get it all over and done with. When I did finally go into labour (I say finally as if she was reaallly late, but actually she was four days early), I had the fortune to have two lovely friends come and babysit me all day until my husband came home from work. Both of them brought their boys with them, who happen to be my son’s best friends, so the children just entertained themselves. The ladies tag-teamed with each other on cooking, shopping and massage duties (I know! how lucky I am to have them) and generally made me feel like I was in the best place to be experiencing the early stages of labour, and were there to hold my hands when things started to get a teensy bit more serious.

Once my husband was home and my son in bed, we sat down to eat dinner in front of the Great British Bake Off and the contractions began in earnest, making me wince while Mary Berry tut-tutted and Paul Hollywood raised his steely grey eyebrows at all the soggy bottoms on show. Then despite things slowing down a little bit when I went to bed, the starter’s gun had officially been fired and we were off down that route from which there is no return. And at 4.10am the next morning, my dark haired, pinky-purpley baby girl arrived, not in the lovely warm birthing pool as planned, but on the edge of the midwife unit’s bed as she came out so quickly, complete with a grey “compression face.”

So one year one, she is simply the most delightful creature, eats almost anything including chilli pasta sauce, is amazed by the way the wind moves the trees around and astonished by the activities of her beloved cat on a daily basis, is constantly entertained by her big brother as he pulls funny faces and sings her silly songs, and is also generally ready to have a go at climbing anything, the stairs, the sofa, the baby gate, the changing bag included.

Now she is just starting to walk a bit and has her very own pair of shoes (she is something of a shoe fetishist), my mother found a little collection of dresses that she made for me when I was small. I’m not too keen on dresses on babies/toddlers in general, given that they are not always the most practical items to wear when you spend much of your time crawling around on all fours. I am also of the opinion that if I don’t put on a ballgown to do the washing up and hoovering, then I don’t see why I should restrict my child’s physical freedom, based on her gender, by putting her in some fancy frou-frou puffball. But, now she is starting to walk, I will be able to make use of these dresses on occasion as they are none of them particularly froofy or impractical, and when coupled with long sleeved tops and leggings, they should be sufficiently warm too.

They all vary in size, and as Mum can’t remember how old I was when I wore them, we are just going to have to judge by the arm and neck hole size, and maybe have a scout through the photo albums to see if we can spot me wearing them at all. The smallest is the one with a beige kind of crimplene-y bottom with a red and blue floral top. The crimplene section came from a skirt of my grandmothers, which is nice to think about – passing on fabrics from three generations ago. All the dresses have some history or other though, and I think the Liberty one (my favourite – although, Liberty on a 1 year old? I don’t even have a Liberty dress yet) came from my other grandmother’s fabric haul.

The green and white flowers may well have been bought specially for me, but both the orangey ones look rather Von Trapp-esque, making me assume that they were both refashioned from either Mum’s own clothes or the living room curtains. In fact the sleeveless one has a definite whiff of upholstery fabric about it, which gives it quite a stiff skirt, making it look oddly formal for such a small person’s garment.  Nonetheless it is a lovely feeling to know that these, and a few other little dresses, can be used again by my daughter having been made with such care by my mother, 30 something years ago.