I remembered another instance. I was reading about sewing, and a grandmother wrote that her daughter-in-law said that the dresses the g'mother had been making for the little granddaughter were scratchy around the waist and the little girl didn't want to wear them.

Everybody felt that this was just a dirty trick, and the DIL was being underhanded, jealous maybe, of the grandmother's lovely dresses. That's typical psychobabble - looking for the secret motive, the hidden evil emotion. Nobody brought up the possibility that the waistline seams were simply scratchy and needed to be sewn in a new way.


A couple years later, exactly the same thing happened. My friend's four-year-old couldn't wear Grandma's pretty dresses because they scratched her. Why not just explain the problem and try a new method for stitching the bodice and skirt together?

By the way, I recently tried button beads onto a blouse, and I soon learn that something scratch-scratch-scratching at your belly is REALLY irritating.