FashBlog.com

By Christina VanGinkel

I thought I knew it all when it came to shopping for children's clothing. Check the stitching, check the comfort of the fabric, check the brand, check the size, and check the price. Well, on a recent shopping trip to pick out a couple pairs of jeans for my grandson, my daughter and I did all of the above plus. We even let the future owner of the jeans, my 32-month-old grandson; give his opinion, as he is actually quite choosy about what he wears. (Anyone who says that fashion sense cannot be inherited has obviously not met my daughter and grandson!) For a toddler, he can tell you in a heartbeat what he considers matching, and what is not. He knows how to match up characters on the fronts of his t-shirts, with those on their matching jeans or shorts. He knows which outfits he should wear his sandals with, and which ones call for his cowboy boots!

Well, on the day in question, we found a sale that offered you the option to choose a second item from a line of kids clothing for fifty percent off, with the discount being given to an item of equal or lesser value. My daughter picked out two pairs of pants, both in an identical cut, with pockets all over, which my grandson thought were just the best. One pair was in a camo pattern, and the other was a typical jean material, though a bit on the thin side. With spring arriving in our part of the country with seemingly above average temperatures, they seemed like an ideal choice.

He wore the camo-patterned jeans the very next day, and the jean ones within a day or two also. She washed them, and the next time she put on the jean ones he complained that they felt funny. The wais still fit him, and the length seemed ok, so she did not really think they had shrunk; besides they were not one hundred percent cotton, not even close, so she doubted that was a problem. Well, yesterday, he had them on again, and from the minute he walked in the door, I noticed he was tugging at them. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he did not want to wear his pants. I pulled up his little t-shirt to look at the waist of the pants and that was when I noticed his pocket linings were sticking out. I asked my daughter about it, and she said she had noticed the same thing, but just thought he had tugged them out. I tucked them in, or I should say I tried. That was when I realized that while the pants might not have shrunk when my daughter washed them, the pockets had!

Just a guess on my part, but the pocket linings appeared to be one hundred percent cotton, and they had shrunk to the point that they were pulling on the stitching all around them. I immediately changed him into a different pair of pants and got out the receipt for the jeans. We had to run up town for a few other items, so I told my daughter she should return the pants right away. She thought they might question the return because the pants had been worn and washed, but when she told the sales lady the details, she looked at the pockets, and responded that she would have said she had never heard of such a thing happening before, except two other people had already returned the identical pair of toddler pants for the very same reason. It was being considered a defect, yet when my daughter walked back to the toddler department to look for a different pair of pants, she noticed the sale was still going on, and there was still a whole rack of the same toddler pants.

If we learned anything form this episode, it was that you could never examine the details of an item of clothing too closely. Save your receipts, and pay attention to the condition of a new item of clothing the first few times you wash and dry it, as if there is any defect in quality or workmanship, it is apt to become apparent after being washed or dried.