Only a few years since, the dress for all infants was cut low in the neck and with short sleeves. A sensible reform made it fashionable to protect the necks and arms of the little ones. It is equally as essential and is just as desirable a reform, that the dress should be so constructed that the natural activity of any part of the body is not hindered. To accomplish this the skirts must be shortened and all bands abolished. Is there any reason why a child’s clothes should be so long that they are a burden to him and an inconvenience to all who handle him?
Many mothers, noting their babies’ constant struggle for exercise, frequently uncover their feet in order to give them an opportunity to kick and stretch. It is not unusual, also, for them to get them out of long clothes by the time they are three months old.
One lady writes that she tried making her baby’s first clothes very short. They were only twenty-seven inches in the entire length, from the shoulder to the hem at the bottom. This experiment proved so satisfactory that she says she will never put long dresses on a child again. Not only was her baby so much more comfortable, but he was so much more easily handled that she felt repaid in the comfort it was to herself. Aside from this, there was no necessity of making short clothes for him until he walked, which was a saving in time and money.
A new-born child requires the following garments:
A Shirt and Band Combined: This should be made of soft flannel or knitted wool. If of flannel, turn hems but once, and cross-stitch down smoothly. Finish the neck and arm’s eye with a button-hole stitch, using silk or worsted. Lay a fold in back of shirt, to make it fit the child, and stitch down smoothly and lap in front and fasten as if it were a band. The shirt has this advantage over the ordinary band, that it cannot wrinkle up if the napkin is pinned to it as it should be. One-half yard of thirty-six inch flannel will make four shirts. This garment is worn mainly to keep the dressing upon the navel in place, and can be discarded when that necessity no longer exists.
Foot blanket: Made of flannel, twenty-seven inches square, and hemmed on three sides. Lay a double box-plait in the center of fourth (or upper) side, stitch down one inch, and face the same width, with a strip of cotton, cut bias. Fasten over the diaper with a small safety-pin. This garment protects other clothing and wraps the feet up nicely until the child is large enough to wear socks. If the weather is cold woolen socks are advisable from the first. However, it is not absolutely necessary, and some mothers dispense with it altogether.
A Flannel Skirt: Is made with long sleeves, and is cut from the same pattern as a night-dress or day-slip. Fine, all-wool flannel is generally used for this skirt, but I would recommend the use of the eider-down flannel, which is also so desirable for baby cloaks. The outside dress can be made as a Mother Hubbard, or slip, and where taste inclines, it may be of finest material and exquisite embroidery. Besides the diaper, the flannel skirt and slip are all the clothes a young baby actually requires. The skirt should be put inside of the dress and the two put on the child at the same time.
Thus an infant may be dressed in less than five minutes, instead of the long, tedious process of the customary dress.
Once clothing a baby in this simple fashion, one would never be inclined to again adopt the long full skirts, the bands and pins, that are a torture to infants and trying to the patience of the mother.
The same general principle may be followed for a child’s wardrobe until he is put into drawers; then these require to be attached to a light waist without sleeves.