If you haven’t tried FireSpiral yet, you need to. I would easily consider them one of my favorite woven wrap companies because their wraps are so special.
FireSpiral Slings make baby wraps that are woven in the U.K. They have two lines: Alchemy, which are a looser weave, and Elements which are a tighter weave. The Alchemy line are incredibly soft and have amazing drape and moldability. The Elements are the workhorses and still very soft, they just take a bit longer to get there.
Octarine Frost Midwinter is part of the Alchemy range, it is 100{33a567f4c07c8c413e7e9e9d9be2242a7b8a132d09d89d1c03680e3e8f95cc61} cotton and has a loose weave. It arrived fairly quickly all the way from the UK and was considerably soft in loom state. After a bath, dry, and steam iron, this wrap was already softer than some of my other wraps. The more I used it, the softer it got and the more I became convinced that this was truly woven with unicorn hair and kitten fur. This would make the perfect squish wrap based only on it’s softness, but that’s not the only amazing quality it has.
The design is an owl on a sprawling tree as snow gently falls all around. The colors are white and blue, although the blue looks either purple or grey in certain light. It is breathtakingly beautiful and intricate. Because of the design and the loose weave, this wrap is extremely pull prone. I had to be careful about snagging a thread on a nail or looking at it wrong, but pulls were easy to weave right back in if they didn’t work themselves out with a few wears. The design adds some texture that was pleasant to the touch and seems to help it stay in place when wrapped. Because the wrap is so soft and smooth, this bit of texture is definitely needed.
It is a medium weight wrap, coming in at 240 g/m2. It felt thin in hand and had a bit of cush which was nice on the shoulders, but I preferred this wrap in multiple layers with my big toddler. There was a nice amount of stretch, making chest passes easy, but it didn’t ever translate to sag. Even in single layer carries, this wrap proved to be nice and supportive. I was surprised about this because I thought that the looser weave would mean less support. But it handled my 30 pounder toddler like a champ.
Wrapping with Midwinter was as pleasurable as it was to snuggle it. Passes were easy and the glide was just delicious. Midwinter truly wraps itself; it was so easy to get a nice wrap job every time, even with a squirmy child. The wrap felt like it melted and molded right to us…. it is just so comfortable.
I would recommend this wrap to everyone: beginners, experienced wrappers, small babies, large children… It really is amazing. It is supportive, SOFT, easy to wrap with, glidey, moldable, cushy yet thin, and did I mention SOFT? I don’t even mind fixing the pulls it gets because it is just so darn snuggly and comfortable.
