Blanket sleeper

The blanket sleeper is a type of especially warm sleeper or footie pajama worn primarily during the winter in the United States and Canada. The garment is worn especially by young children.
Typically, but not always, the blanket sleeper consists of a loose-fitting, one-piece garment of blanket-like material, usually fleece, enclosing the entire body except for the head and hands. It represents an intermediate step between regular pajamas or babygrow, and bag-like coverings for infants such as buntings or infant sleeping bags. Like bag-like coverings, the blanket sleeper is designed to be sufficiently warm as to make regular blankets or other bed covers unnecessary, even in colder weather. Unlike such coverings, the blanket sleeper has bifurcated legs to allow unhindered walking.
While no single feature is universal, blanket sleepers usually include:

One-piece construction with long sleeves and legs.
Attached bootees enclosing the wearer's feet.
Composition from relatively thick, heavy fabric.

Although any sleeping garment with some or all of these characteristics could be called a blanket sleeper, the term is most commonly applied to a range of styles that deviate relatively little from the same basic design. .

[|Features]

Features of the typical blanket sleeper often include:

Usually made of a napped synthetic fabric, such as polyester or polar fleece; however sleepers made from heavier natural fabrics such as cotton are also available, they are not common in North America due to stringent regulations regarding flammability.
Loose fit. On smaller sizes, the hip area may be made especially loose to accommodate a diaper. The crotch is usually cut especially low.
Raglan sleeves.
Snug rib-knit collar and wrist cuffs.
Usually made in one or more solid, bright colors, or screen-printed with graphic designs. There may be a front panel with a single, elaborate printed design, either covering the chest, or forming the entire front portion of the torso and legs. The sleeves may be a different color from the rest of the garment. Stripes are sometimes seen, most commonly on the collar and cuffs.
Soles of the feet made from a vinyl fabric lined with felt, for improved durability and slip-resistance. This can be solid vinyl with a rough textured surface, or a vinyl-dotted fabric such as Jiffy Grip.
Optional toe caps, made from the same fabric as the soles of the feet, and covering the top front portion of the foot, for improved durability.
Elastic to make the leg portions snug around the ankles.
A zipper running vertically down the front of the garment, from the neck opening to the inside or front ankle of one of the legs, designed to make it easy to put on and take off. On teen and adult sizes, the zipper usually instead runs from the neck to the crotch.
Optional snap tab where the zipper meets the neck opening. This is a small tab of fabric sewed to the garment on one side of the zipper, and fastening to the other side with a snap fastener, designed to prevent discomfort from the zipper slider coming into contact with the wearer's chin and deter access to the zipper.
Optional decorative applique on one side of the chest.
Optional hood.
Optional mittens/mitts.

Although primarily worn by the young, blanket sleepers are also worn by school-age children, teens, and even adults. .
Although footed, one-piece garments in a variety of fabrics and styles are used in many countries as infant sleepwear, the specific range of styles with which the term blanket sleeper is usually associated, the term itself, though children older than infancy wearing footed, one-piece sleeping garments is concentrated in the Western world.

Design considerations

Blanket sleepers are usually intended as practical garments, worn mostly by younger children and primarily in the home. Style and fashion thus tend not to be important in its design, and the basic design of the typical blanket sleeper has changed little over the years.
The sleeper serves mainly to keep the wearer warm at night, even in the absence of blankets and bed covers. The sleeper covers the entire body except for the head and hands, where it is snug at the neck and wrists. The use of a zipper closure in place of buttons or snap fasteners also further retains warmth by eliminating drafts. This is especially important for infants, for whom loose blankets may pose a safety hazard, and possibly for older children, who may still be too young to be relied upon to keep their own sleepwear or bed covers adjusted so as to prevent exposure to the air of bare skin. This is reflected in advertisements by blanket sleeper manufacturers, which often emphasize that their garments "can't be kicked off", or that "no other covers are needed". The permanently attached feet can also be a beneficial feature for children who are prone to get out of bed in the morning before their parents are awake, and are too young to be relied upon to put on slippers or other footwear to keep their feet warm, as well as for adults who find putting on, and/or wearing socks in bed too bothersome, yet still want their feet covered when getting out of bed in the morning. Blanket sleepers without feet allow more room for growth and reduce the possibility of slipping. Also, children with larger or smaller feet find a better fit.
The blanket sleeper is designed so that it can be worn either by itself as a standalone garment, or as a second layer worn over regular pajamas or other sleepwear. The one-piece design is simple to launder and has no detachable pieces that could be individually misplaced.
Yet another potential benefit of the blanket sleeper is that it may help prevent infants from removing or interfering with their diapers during the night. This can also apply to older children with certain developmental disabilities, such as Angelman syndrome. In particular, parents of Angelman children have been known to take such additional measures as cutting the feet off the sleeper and putting it on backwards, and/or covering the zipper with duct tape. Some specialty locking clothing and other adaptive clothing purveyors offer blanket sleepers, with or without feet, for adults with dementia or other disabilities, for similar reasons.
Blanket sleepers may also appeal to cultural mores relating to body modesty. This can, for example, be a consideration for some parents when siblings sleep in the same room and/or bed.

Materials

The range of materials used for mass-produced blanket sleepers for children is severely limited, as a result of stringent U.S. government-imposed flammability requirements. Essentially the only materials used since the 1950s are polyester, acrylic, and modacrylic, with polyester dominating. Unfortunately, this can have a negative impact on comfort for many wearers, particularly children with eczema. A small number of sleepers are made from cotton.
Adult-size sleepers, especially those sold by small Internet businesses, can be found in a wider range of materials, including natural fabrics such as cotton flannel. Some web businesses also offer sleepers in natural fabrics for children, but only outside the U.S. In particular, special eczema sleepsuits for children, made of cotton and with built-in mitts designed to prevent scratching, are available from specialty stores in the UK.
The fabrics used in most blanket sleepers have a strong tendency to pill. Although this does not adversely affect the garment's functional utility, it has the effect that a used garment can be clearly, visually distinguished from a new one after only a small number of wearings or washings.
Decorative features such as appliques or printed designs usually follow juvenile themes, and are designed to make the garments more attractive to the children who wear them. Some adult sleepers can also have appliques on them, but those tend to be from Internet clothing suppliers who offer custom-made sleepers and tend to be of favorite cartoon characters or items that the wearer had in childhood such as teddy bears and animal representatives that they had as pets.

Sizes, gender differences, and availability

In the United States and Canada, mass-produced blanket sleepers for both boys and girls up to size 4 are quite common, and can be found in nearly any department store and online. Sizes larger than 4 are progressively less common, being found in only some stores and online, and usually only seasonally. The availability of larger-size sleepers in department stores also varies from year to year.
Alternative sources for larger-size, mass-produced sleepers include Internet auction sites, such as eBay, and certain mail order clothing retailers, such as Lands' End.
Individual blanket sleepers can be marketed either as a unisex garment, or as a garment intended for one gender. Even in the latter case, however, there is often no difference stylistically between sleepers marketed specifically for boys, and ones marketed specifically for girls. . Occasionally, however, sleepers marketed for girls may include feminine decorative features such as lacy frills, and sleepers with screen-printed front panels may feature images of media characters appealing primarily to children of one gender. Also, the ranges of colors available may be different between the genders; in particular, pink sleepers are rarely worn by boys due to a cultural association of that color with femininity.
In smaller sizes, there is little or no difference in the availability of sleepers for boys and for girls. Sleepers for older boys are somewhat less common than those for older girls. Nevertheless, sleepers for both boys and girls continue to be available in department stores, mainly during the fall and winter seasons, and year-round on the internet up to size 16–18.
Blanket sleepers for adult women used to be relatively uncommon, but since 2010s have increased in popularity and can be found in many department stores, usually in the colder months.
Mass-produced blanket sleepers for adult men are more uncommon. However, major home sewing pattern publishers sometimes offer patterns for conventionally styled blanket sleepers in men's sizes, and in the Internet Age a cottage industry has developed, with several websites offering blanket sleepers manufactured on a small scale for men as well as women and children. Also, mass-produced, unisex-styled blanket sleepers marketed for women are sometimes purchased and worn by men, although the difference in the size ranges between men and women means that this option is available only to men of smaller stature.