‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’ (Matt. 25:40)

October is National Infant Loss Awareness Month, so in honor of our 5 grand babies in heaven and their strong mammas, I’ve chosen to work on sets for these little ones that will be donated to both our local Smocking Arts Guild (the guild donates to local hospitals) as well as to Caleb Ministry (they provide memory boxes as well as counseling for women that have suffered infant loss).

I have had several gown sets in the works and living on my dining room table while waiting for the finishing touches – this month was the perfect time to start finishing them.  All of the gowns are made from the SAGA Wee Care #1 pattern, available to all SAGA (Smocking Arts Guild of America) members.

I have taken this opportunity to work on the pleated sleeve option for the gowns as well so that they are a better fit for these tiny babies, so I cut out boy gowns in all the sizes from under 1 lb. – preemie.  The cute frog embroidery was from the A to Z bullion book, but revised to be slightly smaller.  The diaper set is from Teeny Tears.

This set is a preemie size.  The cute sailboat embroidery is from appliqueforkids.com.

This sweet set is also a preemie size.  The smocked bonnet pattern is the tapered smocked bonnet  pattern by Laurie Anderson.  The hem & blanket embroidery design is from Fromtheneedleofanne.com, though I cannot remember the name of the set.  I use it all the time because it takes only about 8 minutes to stitch out and it is beautiful.

This next set is a 1 – 2 lb. size.  The smocked bonnet pattern is by Judith Marquis called The Preemie Baby Boy’s Bonnet.  It compliments the rest of the set perfectly.

This sweet gown set features embroidery by appliqueforkids.com called Nap Time.  The bonnet pattern is now available in my Etsy shop.  I had previously had only the preemie (4-5 lb.) size available but now offer the micro-preemie sizes (1 – 4 lb.) as well.

The embroidery design from Appliqué for Kids was so cute that I had to use it twice.  The smocking design on this gown was the giraffe from the Little Memories S. S. Noah plate – just revised a bit to use for the tiny gown and stitched with 3 strands of floss rather than the usual 4.

I have a few more gowns in the works and will complete them as time allows.  However, I wanted to share these sets and hopefully raise awareness for all of those families touched by infant loss.  If you are a seamstress and looking for a worthy cause, there are so many organizations that would love to have you sew these tiny gowns for them.  There are plenty of non-smocked options such as this one for tiny gowns.  This kimono pattern comes from 7pinedesigns.com and the bonnet pattern is my micro-preemie pattern.  Other organizations accept hand knit blankets.  If sewing or knitting isn’t your thing but you still want to participate, Caleb Ministry accepts donations so that they can buy the supplies needed to create the special boxes that they provide (for free!) to all of the area hospitals in Charlotte.

I pray for the families that will receive these sets in the future.  I am happy that I can do something that might help them during this difficult time.   I hope that this post will inspire others to use their talents to bring a measure of healing to families that have lost their precious little ones.