COLOR: Baby Clothes Pastel or Not?

[CAMERON KGD/84078259 - GEOGRAPHY]

Personally, I don't much like pastel pink or blue. Newborns look cute in them, but after a month or two, I like to see them in something with more personality. I just finished a hunter green cardigan with wooden buttons in size two and it looks really nice - a very grown up style, but still cute. Bright colours like royal blue, red, and yellow are fun, too. And you don't have to worry about whether it's a boy or a girl!

- Kristen

2
:wq
:wq

[SarahS4151]

strangely, looking at baby clothes in the stores, the pastels dominate.
and yet when i make clothes for babies (am becoming locally famous for.
always invited to baby showers) i always use strong dark colors. clothes
like i wear. and people LOVE them

am presently knitting a newborn sweater out of burgundy cotton thread.
Almost done! and have the yarn for the next one, a dark dusty purple. both
for girls, but could be handed down to boys.

sarah

[bec...@hal4.usm.uni-muenchen.de]

our baby boy got to wear whatever was available (we got quite a few "leftovers"
from family and friends). He actually looked great in a pinkish (salmon pink)
set with dark purple animals on. However, I generally preferred the primary
colours on him, several at a time. He still looks great in bright red. His
hair is white blond an he needs a bit of colour in his clothing so that he
doesn't look too pale.
Also, knitting (or buying) for somebody else's babies, I'd almost always
prefer primary colours - or white with just a bit of colour. (I did do a
wonderful fair isle ab sweater in pastels, though - minty green, yellow, blue
and purplish. That pattern would have looked awful in primary colours :-) but
I generally try and avoid the typical girlish pink even in such a colour mix,
it just tends to stand out and doesn't blend in with the rest). My mother-in-
law is also knitting for her large number of grand children and seems to followthe same kind of colour pattern - I'v seen some pastel greens and apricot type
colours, white, blue and primaries but pink only comes out if someone asks for
it specifically.

Just my .02$

Sylvia
--
Dr. Sylvia R. Becker | Phone: +49 89 922094 39
Universitaetssternwarte Muenchen | Fax: +49 89 922094 27
Scheinerstr. 1 | e-mail: bec...@usm.uni-muenchen.de
D-81679 Muenchen, Germany

[Robin Panza]

I had heard that a baby's eyesight isn't up to par and that they don't readily
see pastels. Then the question is, are you making the item such that the baby
can enjoy it (then make it bold and bright) or the baby's adult acquaintances
(who have been trained that pastel = baby)? I agree with you in using strong
(although generally not dark, my personal taste running to "flame" colors)
colors for baby clothes that I make. This is in part because of a desire for
baby to be able to see what I've done and in part because I'm going to be
looking at the yarn for a fair number of hours while making it and I dislike
pastels.

Robin

[Cathy Coe]

My guess is that pastels became traditional for baby clothes because
brighter colours faded with the amount of hard washing that baby
clothes get, although this isn't as much a problem with modern dyes
and detergents. I had to do a lot of soaking to rid baby clothes
of the various things deposited on them, and since they grew out of
things so quickly, I had fewer outfits, which required more frequent
wearings and washings.

I love being able to use the brighter colours for babies now. My
4 year old's blankie was done in bright purples, blues, and greens,
and is still as colourful as ever despite numerous of washings.

Cathy

[SBEnser]

My second, a girl, was quite bald until age 2 1/2. Because it really
bugged me that people always assumed she was a boy, I made her lots of
pink things - her favorite is a dusty rose sweater with Peter Rabbit
buttons now proudly worn by the teddy bear.
Sandi

[Writan Consulting]

pan...@clpgh.org (Robin Panza) wrote:
>
> In article <3iu3e5$h...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, sarah...@aol.com (SarahS4151) writes:
> > strangely, looking at baby clothes in the stores, the pastels dominate.
> > and yet when i make clothes for babies (am becoming locally famous for.
> > always invited to baby showers) i always use strong dark colors. clothes
> > like i wear. and people LOVE them

Expensive trendy baby and children's clothing is often in strong
darker colors. I've seen a lot of mustard and black lately. Pastels
seem be be popular either in the very expensive traditional shops,
or the cheaper chainstores. Once a baby starts crawling, what
looks good for longer - black overalls, or pastel blue ones?
I know what I chose! Besides, lots of babies start out blonde,
and black looks great on little blonde girls :).

/anne...