Titchy clothes

I sent off my first parcel of titchy clothes for babes born early... you can read all about the project here. Basically a bunch of sewing girls on Essential baby are working hard to stock Darwin Hospital NICU with non-hospital issue clothes for premmie babies. Something made with love and hope in bright cheerful fabric. All babies deserve to wear something gorgeous made just for them!

I used a modified version of this pattern here. Trust me to always change things about a bit as I sew! Please dont take that to mean I think the original pattern is in some way defective, most of my changes were born of laziness.

The first thing I did was to make the front pattern piece the same as the back pattern piece and then I also fully lined the tops so that they are reversible. I find doing it this way quicker and neater than fiddling around with bias binding. The next change I made was to make the tops close at the side, rather than the back, this was because the snaps on my snap machine are reasonably thick, and would poke into a baby. Placing them at the side gets them out of the way and was quicker than the alternative of having to sew on velcro or smaller press studs. I also played with making the tops less A-line (so the boys wouldnt look like they were wearing a pinny) but it involved adding in little tabs so that the snaps could go on- not sure if the extra work is worth it or not (I will have to wait and get some feedback on that from the organiser of the project). The last change I made was to downsized the medium size to make a micropremmie size (I hope!) . I could have traced off the small size from the pattern link above, but at the time I was ready to cut out the fabric the computer was turned off I was too lazy to turn it on.

All in all these are heaps of fun to do, quite addicitive and a GREAT way to use up scraps. I tried to spend the sewing time reflecting about the incredibly hard journey premmie babies, their mums and dads and any siblings must go through. I just hope the parents of babies that end up wearing these can feel some of the well wishes and love and hope that have gone into their making.

The side-closing reversible premmie top

Slimmed down boys version with side tabs (made from girly guitar fabric. DOH!)

Nine completed "medium" size tops (I am guessing they would fit 30+ weeks)

7 completed "small" tops. I think these would be micro-premmie size
Just to give you a vague idea of size... medium top next to a regular sized banana
Small and medium tops next to each other.
Baby blankets are approx 50cm square with the edges rounded so I could do a rolled hem on the edge.