Maternity Clothes as new Priority

In this year’s first blog post, I announced that I was pregnant. This kind of changed my whole planning for my sewing and quilting projects. The quilting projects were first not so much affected by it as I still need to finish a few projects before I can start planning baby quilts. But in terms of clothes maternity clothes became my first priority, because I simply do not fit into anything anymore at this stage.

The Research: Maternity Clothes Patterns Online

Almost immediately when I found out that I was pregnant, I started researching online where to find maternity clothes. The logical thing for me was sewing some essential pieces and I was looking out for sewing patterns. I checked various websites but ended up again with a selection of maternity sewing patterns from Burda Style. They simply looked most stylish and less like a big bag of cloth. Moreover, I felt that these patterns made the most sense for being dressed properly when going to work throughout my pregnancy.

So I made a list and decided that I would need mainly pieces like trousers and maybe one skirt. I have quite a selection of wide tops and blouses that would do at least for the first two trimesters.

The Plan: Purchasing a Few Essential Sewing Patterns

The main issue regarding sewing maternity clothes in Qatar is the fabrics. Most of the sewing patterns require fabric types with stretch in one or even both directions. This is something almost impossible to get in the Doha fabric market. Another issue is that you need very often another fabric for the bump that is very elastic. The requirement is mostly jersey stretch or even the special cuff jersey that freaked me out before when I made my jersey T-shirts back in January 2020.

So my only option for the moment was to repurpose some of the fabrics that I had purchased before in German for other projects to use them for maternity clothes. I did so with a heavy-read stretch jersey to make the red maternity skirt. But what I really need are maternity pants. I managed to find white denim that is a bit stretchy. The sewing pattern for the pants is already prepared.

But the issue of the lack of a ‘bump-covering’ jersey still needs to be solved. Loki tried to help me out, but he could not find a solution either. I was looking through all my jersey leftovers, but it would be too much of a mix-and-match that it would not really make sense.

I might have to place an order from the ‘kingdom of fabrics’ to Doha after all… 🙂

Thinking Pragmatically

My second approach was a more pragmatic one. There are a few sewing projects that I had in mind already that could be declared maternity clothes. They are actually based on normal sewing patterns, i.e. for non-pregnant times, but they are wide enough that they could fit during pregnancy as well.

The pink shirt on the left is a good example of these sewing patterns declared maternity clothes for the time being. I had wanted to make this for more than a year. The striking pink color made me look for a similar pink jersey in Germany last winter. When I found it I was convinced I would make this shirt soon after practicing to sew with jersey for a bit. This sewing pattern is also considered as ‘very easy’ and I did this shirt in less than a day.

My Current Maternity Look

So, my current maternity look is a combination of non-maternity clothes like my Burda Style shirts and dress that I dedicate a blog post to in October, some maternity sewing patterns, and a few wide tops. There is still a lot of room for improvement though. I still want to make some maternity pants and also two or three dresses.

But I should hurry up with this. After all, I am already 6 months pregnant and who knows when the little gentleman decides to make his appearance? 🙂

Do you have any recommendations for me in terms of maternity fashion? Please share your thoughts with me in the comment section below.