Artisanal Attire
Explore the Baby Hut’s Handmade Children’s Clothing
Lisa Patrick
Ashland Beacon
When Forest Evans had her baby girl, Adalynn, in early 2020, she knew that she wanted her to wear cute handmade clothing. However, she also knew that anything handmade would be expensive. So, using her daughter as her inspiration, Evans decided that she would make her daughter the cute handmade clothing herself and that’s when she says that she fell in love with making children’s clothes.
Shortly after she discovered this newfound love of making children’s clothing, Evans decided that she wanted to share her craft with others so they too could experience the joy of buying quality handmade clothing for their little ones. She then started “The Baby Hut” and four years and a lot of fabric later, Evans shared that she still loves it.
Evans describes The Baby Hut’s offerings as affordable, handmade clothing and accessories. Evans handmakes children’s clothing from preemie up to size 10/12. She specializes in dresses, but she also makes shirts, pants, shorts, and anything else you can think of for both boys and girls. Evans also offers the option to place a custom order.
This year, Evans started designing her own artwork for her handmade items. She said that “it’s hard to compete with prices if everyone has the same designs.” Evans decided to make a Facebook group to share her handmade clothing with others. She has a private Facebook group as opposed to a business page though because other companies were copying her clothing designs.
Evans has two other children, Jace who is age two and Luke who is just eight months old. Evans makes some of their clothes too, but her daughter remains her “muse” for the business she runs. Her daughter was her first model for her clothing and still models it till this day.
Recently Evans started offering handmade pageant dresses made from silk and chiffon with hand-placed beadwork and handcrafted lace. They are dazzling to see in person. Once her daughter wanted to start participating in pageants and she realized how expensive pageant dresses were, Evans started making the pageant dresses herself. Evans shared, “the pageant dresses have been extremely popular since I started offering them a couple of months ago.” In the past two months alone, she has made eleven pageant dresses.
So far, a lot of her orders have been from out of state. She has just now started selling her clothing locally. To help get her name out there more she has participated in several vendor events and has had a great deal of success with them.
About a year ago, Evans started offering handmade accessories like bows, purses, and hair glitters. She explained, “that’s when things really started to take off.” She even sponsored her daughter’s tee ball team this year. “I was so happy that I was finally able to sponsor something.” declared Evans.
Evans has big goals for her business. She currently works with a lot of stretch fabrics except for the pageant dresses, but she would like to start working with cotton materials even though she knows working with such fabrics will be more work. To start off with she plans on offering dresses and will then branch out from there.
Eventually, hopefully within the next year, Evans plans to open her own storefront. She is considering several locations at the moment, but she is leaning more toward the idea of a Greenup County based store. Evans explained, “If I have my store in Greenup County then it will be in the middle of everyone, so no one has to drive very far. It’s about the same distance from Ashland, Portsmouth, Vanceburg, and other locations. So, I feel like it might be the perfect location.”
The Baby Hut can be found on Facebook on their private group page called “The Baby Hut LLC.” It also has its own webpage which can be found at www.the-baby-hut.com.
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