PATCHWORK: NOT FASHION BUT BELIEF
Talismanic clothing and evil eye beads are the first thing that pop into mind at the mention of children’s clothing in Anatolia.Such clothes, whose origin pre-dates the rise of the monotheistic religions, utilize a thousand and one different materials and are designed to ensure that children are healthy and long-lived. Such ‘patchwork’ clothing also expresses traditional beliefs. Mothers, for example, who have lost children, make patchwork clothes to protect their babies from evil spirits. There is a belief that evil spirits come in the night and that, as they struggle to remove the layers of clothing piece by piece, day dawns and they vanish into thin air.
Let us now relate one such story. There once was a woman named Bahar Hatun whose babies died as soon as they were born. This grief-stricken young mother collected bits of cloth from seven families that had been blessed with children and made from them a variety of baby clothes. Eventually Bahar Hatun gave birth to a beautiful baby girl followed immediately by a boy.