Wet/dry bag

Hubby is back at work after paternity leave, which means that Noob is now in child care outside the home. We found a lovely woman to watch him out of her home, and she is even willing to do cloth diapers. But there are a few things that we don't need at home but we do need to send over with Noob. That means I have some sewing to do!

First up, I need to make some large wetbags. Wetbags are bags with waterproof material on the inside, so that they can hold... well, wet stuff. So they're great for transporting dirty cloth diapers. I also use them to hold wet swimsuits/towels at the pool, to hold soiled clothes when we're out, etc. They are very handy things to have around, even if you don't use cloth diapers!

I've made wetbags before, using this tutorial. The instructions look complicated, but they're pretty easy, once you get the hang of it. This time around, I wanted to add a twist. I had heard that Planet Wise's wet/dry bags are handy for sending to daycare. They have two pockets, one that is waterproof ("wet") and one that is not ("dry"). So the clean diapers go in the dry pocket in the morning, and then the dirty diapers go in the wet pocket throughout the day.

I usually use woven cotton for the outer fabric of my wetbags, because it's easy to find and reasonably priced. This particular fabric was a Joann's remnant bin steal. It was a Red Tag clearance fabric, so it was only $3 for a yard (regularly $6/yard). Then I bought it when Red Tag fabrics were on sale for 50% off, dropping it down to $1.50. Then that yard was in the remnants bin, while remnants were on sale for 75% off, so that dropped it down to just 37 cents. Like I said, a steal!

Anyway. I cut two big pieces of the printed cotton fabric, about 15"x18". I wanted the bag to be lined. I wanted to make two bags out of my yard of printed fabric, so I didn't have enough printed fabric for the lining. I grabbed an old white pillowcase and cut that up instead!

I took one of the pieces of printed fabric and one of the pieces of pillowcase, and cut them about 5" from the top, to create two pieces.

I got out my first zipper, and followed the instructions in the tutorial to attach it to the larger piece of printed fabric and pillowcase lining -- basically, steps 2-4 in that tutorial. I placed the pillowcase lining down, then placed the zipper on top facing up. I lined up the top edge of the zipper with the top edge of the lining. Finally, I put the printed fabric face down and lined up the top edge of the fabric with the top edge of the zipper.

Then I sewed all the layers together, opened up the fabric, and topstitched through all layers. Very important: I always use 100% polyester thread when sewing wetbags. Thread with cotton in it will wick moisture from the inside of the bag to the outside. Not. Good.

I repeated these steps to attach the smaller piece of fabric and lining to the other side of the zipper. Then I was able to open it up, like this (the lining fabric is underneath the printed pieces):

I cut another piece of pillowcase that was the same size as this entire piece of fabric/zipper. I treated that entire dealio (the two pieces of fabric and lining attached to the zipper plus the large piece of lining) as one piece of fabric.

For the waterproof inner, I used PUL (polyurethane laminate), purchased at Joann's. PUL is waterproof, is very durable, and launders well. I cut two pieces of PUL, a little bigger than my pieces of fabric.

From there on out, I followed the tutorial, attaching my fabric/zipper/lining/lining piece and one piece of PUL to one side of the second zipper, then attaching the other piece of fabric and other piece of PUL to the other side of the zipper. Then I stitched around the fabric pieces to form a bag, stitched each side of the PUL (leaving the bottom open), turned the whole thing inside out, and stitched the bottom of the PUL bag closed. (See the tutorial for step-by-step directions and pictures).

Here is the fabric/zipper/lining/lining piece on top of the PUL with the second zipper sandwiched in between. You can see that the PUL is bigger than the fabric. I find that the layers tend to shift around while I'm sewing, so making the PUL bigger gives me some wiggle room if the fabric does shift on top of the PUL:

Second zipper added, fabric bag all sewed up, two sides of the PUL bag all sewed up. I had to remember to unzip both zippers part of the way prior to sewing. Otherwise, I would have sewed the zippers outside the bags! I also added a handle. You can barely see it in between the two zippers on the right side:

And that's that! Oh, one last very important thing: I threw the bag in the dryer on high heat. That makes the PUL melt slightly, to seal up any holes made by the sewing machine needle, pins, etc. while sewing.

Here's a close-up of the bag in action with diapers in both pockets. You can also see the snap I added on the handle, so that it can snap around the handle of a stroller, etc.:

I'm excited to send it over with Noob! I'm going to sew up more of these, so that I have 2-3 of them, since we do diaper laundry every 2-3 days and will throw these bags in with the laundry.

Next time, I think I'm going to make the handle out of a few more layers of fabric or out of webbing, so that it is more durable. This one feels really thin and flimsy, so I don't know how it's going to hold up over time. Also, I sewed the two zippers going the opposite directions :) You can see that the dry pocket zipper is at the bottom in the picture above, while the wet pocket zipper is at the top. Oh well! It should work just fine!

Final cost: 37 cents for the outer fabric, nothing for the lining (yay upcycling!), $5 for the PUL... and $2 each for the zippers! Hancock Fabrics does 50% off all zippers on occasion, and I have got to hit up that sale next time they do it, because zippers are kind of expensive. But anyway, that works out to less than $10 total for the bag, and I still have enough fabric left over to make another one. Given that the Planet Wise version is $30, I think I can live with flimsy handles and zippers that go opposite directions :)