A Wacky Tale About Bibs

Do any of you remember the classic Seuss book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins?

I originally read it in grade school and many times after that to my children and grandchildren.  In the story Dr. Seuss spins this wacky tale about a strange thing that "just happened to happen and was not very likely to happen again.”  Bartholomew tries to take off his hat for the king but every time he takes his hat off there is another one is on his head.  This weird and wonderful story reminds me of one of my sewing projects recently. 

I love making bibs.  I find they are always a welcome gift.  Most parents prefer getting formula and food on the bibs rather than baby’s clothes. After all, bibs are cheaper than clothes.   

So when I was walking through Jo-Ann’s the one day last month and I saw this adorable Thanksgiving material I knew I had to have some to make bibs for our Family Thanksgiving Dinner.  We would have 5 littles under 5 this year. 

The material is unisex and I imagined a happy afternoon sewing up 5 or 8 Thanksgiving bibs.  (There is always leftover fabric to use up and a couple of extra bibs are easily given away.)

My bib patterns are all hand drawn by me.  Years ago I started out copying an old bib I had around but over the years I’ve been free-handing them.  Bibs are one of the easiest things to sew and one of the most appreciated gifts.  Last year I did a tutorial on bib-making.  You can find it here.  

This time there are a few things I did differently on these bibs.  It’s not necessarily better just different.  First I picked the edges instead of clipped them.  It just seemed faster.  Then instead of using Kam snaps (my preferred fasteners) I used Velcro.  I don’t usually use Velcro because it gets tangled in the wash with the terry backing on the bibs but it was easily at hand.  (I have been making doll clothes.) 

Another thing I want to mention (well, caution against really) is to watch how you lay out your pattern on directional material.  I wasn’t paying close enough attention and I cut two bibs going the wrong way.  The poor turkeys were standing on their heads.  I had already cut and sewn 8 bibs before I noticed the two upside down bibs.  My granddaughter assured me that no one would notice but I knew it would haunt me thru the entire Thanksgiving Day if I gifted two of my grandchildren with them.  There was nothing for it but to buy more fabric.  Off to Jo-Ann’s and another afternoon of happily sewing Thanksgiving bibs. 

I cut out the two new replacement bibs and had a leftover piece of scrap for two more bibs. I now had the original 8 bibs and with the 4 new one I had a dozen Thanksgiving bibs.  I could easily find homes for the extra 7 bibs (yes, even for the two upside down ones.  My granddaughter wanted to give them to her sister-in-law for her two children.  I hated letting inferior bibs go but she finally convinced me.)

All should have been well but wait for it…

We had a newborn in the family this year.  Wade Craig was born October 5th.  I had forgotten just how little a newborn was.  My bibs were all toddler-size.  Wade swam in his.  I really wanted to see all the littles in the same Thanksgiving bib.  But it just wasn’t going to work for Wade. 

Back to Jo-Ann’s for another piece of fabric.  I also picked up a lovely Grinchmas Christmas print (non-directional) for Christmas bibs.  

 I cut two infant sized bib (but that left all the rest of the fabric as scrap.)  I wanted to use up the scrap so I decided to make more bibs in the smaller size to use up the fabric.  That meant I had a total of 6 new infant-sized bibs—a total of 18 Thanksgiving bibs. 

I decided to sew Christmas bibs.  I thought while I was at it I might as well do the same for Christmas.  (I had the bugs worked out, right?)  I’m not going to go into how I ended up with 15 Christmas bibs… 

What I will share is that all the bibs have found homes.  A set of Thanksgiving and Christmas bibs each went to a friend of my granddaughter another to my daughter’s boss’ newborn son.  Some went to children in my grandson’s Carter’s Sunday school class.  The extras were just used as random acts of kindness which is a lovely reason to use them for.