I had the immense pleasure of making baby-clothes for the christening of a 3-month old baby girl this summer.
I used the long-ago-produced sketch-pattern from the SK for the basic shape and a bit of leeway in design.
The shift is unbleached cotton as it's softer and finer (hard to get very fine linen, harder still to get it softened in time!). In retrospect, I do wish I'd used linen, just to have everything right, but then again cotton was around for very special outfits in the 1640s, and you don't get much more special than a christening gown!
The overdress is red linen (from Ikea...), a kind of deep pink cherry-red that I boilwashed in the machine and then hung on the line outside for a month to soften the harshness of the chemical dye a bit.
I used smocking for the first time, and am really impressed with its elasticity (someone asked if I'd used shirring elastic which just shows how stretchy smocking is!).
I used red thread on the shift so the pattern came from the stitches, and red thread on the overdress so the pattern came from the pleats and folds.
I may add more about smocking in the future as I really like it - not so much as a decorative thing as I always thought but for its practical applications as in the shift, and the way the fabric can speak for itself as in the overdress.
