On Sleeves, and Other Things I’ve Changed My Mind About

I have spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about sleeves. How long should one be? Where should the ruffle begin? Should you see a little wrist when you reach for the kettle? These are questions I never expected to discuss with anyone, yet I have discussed them at length, with diagrams.

It started innocently. I wanted to make a nightdress I would love wearing. I could picture it very clearly, right up until I had to explain that picture to somebody who would actually make it. Then I discovered that “a little bit floaty” is not a measurement.

I found myself going through clothes I already own, taking out a tape measure and working out why I reach for some more often than others. A sleeve can look lovely in a photograph and still get in the way when you wash your hands. A neckline can be beautiful and make you tug at it every time you sit down. There is a point where a ruffle feels charming, and a point, a few centimetres later, where you appear to have come dressed as a lampshade.

I have changed my mind about all of these things. Occasionally within the same afternoon. I have also discovered that a photograph taken from the wrong angle can send me into a completely unnecessary panic about a collar.

The funny part is that I know exactly how I want a Beddressed nightdress to feel. I want to put it on at night and forget about it. In the morning, I want to make breakfast, pick up one of my girls, and open the door without having to arrange myself first. I want the lovely details to stay lovely after the hundredth time I wear it. Translating that into a pattern involves rather more decisions than I realised.

There are fabrics to choose, too. I have looked at cotton so closely that I now have opinions about the way a piece of cloth falls over the back of a chair. I know how it feels between my fingers, and I keep wondering how it will feel after a whole night of sleeping in it. A beautiful fabric on a table is only the beginning of the conversation.

Some evenings I look at the drawings and wonder if I am fussing over things nobody will notice. Then I put on something I own and immediately notice that its cuff ends in precisely the wrong place. I have to laugh. These tiny choices add up to the difference between a dress you admire and one you keep reaching for.

The first Beddressed nightdresses are still being made. I expect I will have more opinions when I can try them on, and I expect a few of today’s certainties will not survive that meeting. For now, I am back at my desk, moving a sleeve by a centimetre and imagining the day someone will wear it without giving the sleeve a second thought.