Why I Chose This Fabric For My Messy Little Thing Baby Bibs
Customers are often surprised at how light the fabric is for our bibs so I thought it would be useful to tell you a little more about the fabric selection.
My weaning experience
When I was weaning my daughter, I wasn’t a fan of cotton baby bibs as they tended to absorb liquid, show stains and took too long to dry. I didn’t like the hard plastic bibs either as I felt my baby couldn’t eat comfortably and didn’t like the thought that my baby was sweating in an uncomfortable plastic fabric.
After spending a while researching fabrics and suppliers, I came across a fabric that was extremely lightweight yet water repellent. I loved this as it meant it didn’t hinder babies eating and was easy for them to move in. Bearing in mind they are learning hand to mouth coordination and exploring foods, I think it is important that the baby can explore food easily without a bib getting in their way.
As this fabric was so light, this also meant the bibs dry really quickly so if you have a messy meal, the bib can be washed and dried and ready to be used again within a couple of hours.
What fabric does Messy Little Thing use?
The bibs are made with 100% toxin-free lightweight fabric. They are soft and gentle against your baby’s skin and do not contain any nasty chemicals.
The Science bit.
Our fabric is produced by an award-winning fabric manufacturer in England. The fabric is designed to be light so easy and comfortable to wear yet strong enough to repel liquids as it has a water-repellent coating. This fabric is also used for surgeon's gowns.
The fabric has been tested with industrial washing machines and can be washed over 50 times and the water-repellent coating remains intact.
The colour choice for the baby bibs
Definitely a personal input on this one! When weaning my daughter in 2013, there seemed to be two choices in the longer but still poorly designed long bibs: pale pink for a girl or pale blue for a boy. Either colour showed food stains and it always felt like my daughter’s bibs were dirty. I certainly didn’t want to start scrubbing at bibs as well as clothes. So when choosing a fabric choice for Messy Little Thing, I opted for navy which means you won’t be scrubbing our bibs each night! After all, this is one of the key things we are trying to help with in the first place! We do offer a range of colours for the edging – bright pink, bright blue and yellow.
Every now and then, I do get asked if I will increase the main fabric colour range and whilst I will consider this in the future, I will only do so if I’m sure the fabric won’t show stains!
Ultimately, the purpose of our company is to help make mealtimes calm for the family by enabling babies to explore food textures in a comfortable well-fitting bib and for parents and carers to not worry about clothes getting stained. We realised this doesn’t stop at 12 months so our range of bibs covers children up to the age of about six. The fabric is an important element to the design. If you’d like to read more about how to look after your Messy Little Thing bib – take a look at this article.