Another fleece sleep sack

This one is made out of the same McCall's 4236 pattern that I've used to make sleep sacks in the past. I made it with long sleeves this time, as sometimes Noob doesn't have any clean long sleeve shirts at bedtime. So I think it'll be handy to have a sleep sack that he could wear over short sleeve shirts, even in winter. But to be honest, the sleeves were a pain to sew on, and they limit how long Noob will be able to use the sleep sack (hard to believe, but we probably won't be using heat anymore two months from now...) so if I do any more in this size, I'll probably do sleeveless again.

The fabric is Joann's blizzard fleece, in an ice hockey pattern -- Hubby plays ice hockey! I don't love the print, but it was in the remnants bin during the great 75% off remnants sale, when blizzard fleece was already on sale for 50% off. So I got four feet of it for about two dollars. I usually avoid blizzard fleece for cloth diapering stuff because it's not as stretchy as anti-pill fleece, making it tougher to fit over diapers, but for a sleep sack, stretch isn't too important.

Noob is sleeping in it tonight and it fits him well.

Mini Moc madness!

I sewed up two more pairs of Mini Mocs last night. The ones on the right are made out of the gray wool from the same sweater I've already used to make a previous pair of Mini Mocs and two pairs of longies. That one sweater went a long way! It's finally gone, though :)

The ones on the left are denim, lined with fleece. The denim is from some old pairs of jeans of mine. For some reason, these days, I am always getting holes in the knees of my jeans. I think it has to do with having kids and crawling around down on the floor a lot more. Anyway, last summer, I had three or four pairs of jeans with holes in the knees, and only one pair of jean shorts. So I cut off the jeans and hemmed them to make jean shorts. They don't look great (jeans are much tighter on the thighs than actual jean shorts...) but they're functional.

That project left me with a bunch of scraps of denim. I saved them, thinking surely I could find some use for them. And I finally did! :) For the topstitching on these Mini Mocs, I used the same thread that I used on the hems of my "new" jean shorts. I got it at Wal-mart. It's the same brownish-yellow color as the thread that is used on the stitching for actual jeans, and it's stronger than normal thread to hold up while sewing thick denim. It works well and looks good.

Here's a close-up of the heel of the shoe, showing the stitching. I used the inside seam of the jeans on the heel, mostly because it was hard to find a wide-enough strip of material that did not have a seam :) But I think it looks cute, too!

I did goof a little while sewing these, and the shoe on the right in the first picture above is noticeably narrower than the one on the left. This is because I did leather soles (on the denim shoes and also the wool ones), and you can't really pin leather. That makes it tricky to get all the layers of fabric lined up correctly so that you can get the right seam allowance. It's also tricky to get the right seam allowance when you're sewing on a curve, as you have to do with shoes. So I ended up stitching a little too far from the edge of the sole on that shoe, resulting in it being narrower than it should. I think I may redo it when I get the chance, since I still have plenty of denim left!

I should mention that I purchased special leather sewing needles and heavy thread to use for sewing these soles on to the shoes. Those supplies are easy to find at Joann's.

Once I redo that one denim shoe, I think I'm done with shoes for a while. At least until Noob outgrows these shoes and needs new ones :)

Even more Mini Mocs

The Mini Mocs that I sewed for Noob about a month ago have seen a ton of use! They're working out beautifully. So I'm working to sew up a few more pairs, to give him some more stylin' shoe options. This pair is made out of scraps from the same wool sweater that I used to make his longies.

The soles are leather, made out of a genuine leather skirt that I bought at a local thrift store for 99 cents. Leather should be more durable than the faux suede that I used on the other pair of Mini Mocs (although the faux suede is holding up nicely too, and washes really well).

Of course, they coordinate perfectly with his new longies! (Ignore the shirt, which doesn't coordinate so well with either.)

Hee hee :)

Wool longies

We've been snowed/iced in for the better part of the last week, and Noob has been pretty much living in wool longies over prefold diapers.

Prefolds are the "old-fashioned" cloth diapers that are basically a big square of cotton. Since they are just cotton, they soak through as soon as they get wet, so they need some kind of cover over them to keep the moisture in.

Covers made out of PUL (polyurethane laminate) are the most popular option these days. PUL is easy to wash and comes in all sorts of fun colors and prints. But in the olden days, moms used wool covers over diapers, and wool is still a great option today!

• It absorbs up to 30% of its weight in liquid. (PUL simply keeps the liquid in but doesn't absorb.) That makes it a great choice for heavy wetting babies.
• It's breathable, allowing air to circulate, rather than locking moisture in and air out like PUL does.Ever heard of letting a baby go diaperless to "air out" a diaper rash? Using a wool cover is the same idea, but much less messy!
• Although it does have to be hand washed, you only have to wash it once every few weeks! The lanolin in wool neutralizes urine odor, so the wool doesn't stink.

Wool longies are basically wool pants, so they're a diaper cover and an article of clothing all in one. They are so cozy in winter, they make for easy diaper changes on squirmy older babies like Noob (I just get his diaper on quickly and then I can let him stand up while I put on his longies), and they are nice and trim. Noob has been rotating through two pairs of longies and he desperately needs more!

Luckily, wool is a great material for rookie sewers! It is much easier to work with than PUL. (PUL tends to be slippery, you have to be careful about poking too many pin/needle holes in it because then moisture can escape, etc.) It's also easy to find for cheap at your local thrift store, or possibly even in your closet!

Indeed, in my closet, I have two big boxes of wool sweaters that I got from a local mom who was moving and wanted to get rid of them. I paid $10 for probably 20 or 25 sweaters! The one I used for these longies was one of my favorites. It's a super soft lambswool sweater from J.Crew.I should have taken a "before" picture, but here's the sweater after I cut it up. You can sort of see that the body of the sweater was a heather gray and the sleeves were black:

I felted the sweater slightly, which basically means washing it on warm or hot water, and drying it in the dryer. This causes the wool to shrink and thicken up, which makes it better at keeping moisture in. Be careful of overfelting... in the past, I've felted sweaters so much that they barely stretch anymore. Longies made of overfelted wool are very hard to get onto a baby! I got this one just right. It's nice and thick, but still stretchy.

I used the Katrina pattern for longies to make the longies. It's easy to sew, it fits great, and it's completely free. I used a size small for Noob, who is right around 20 lbs. Note that you can also use the Katrina pattern to make fleece longies, but the sizing is really different in wool vs. fleece. Noob is a size medium in fleece longies.

I cut two of the longies pattern from the gray body of the sweater. Important: The pattern is not symmetrical. It's cut higher in the back than in the front (to fit over bulky cloth diapers). You need to make sure to flip the pattern over when cutting the second piece, or cut on the other side of the fabric. So when you put the fabric wrong sides together (or right sides together, for that matter), they should match up perfectly. I hope that makes sense. When I first sewed this pattern, I cut two identical pieces and then they didn't fit together when I went to sew them!

Anyway. The sleeves of this sweater were wide enough that I was actually able to cut them open and lay them flat, then use the pattern to cut the pieces, just like I did with the body of the sweater. In the past, I've also used this tutorial to make longies out of sweater sleeves, but I find it's a little harder to get the sizing just right.

I cut a black waistband out of the scraps from one of the sleeves. I couldn't get a long-enough contiguous piece of gray fabric, so I cut two smaller pieces (adding an extra half inch to the total length) and sewed them together..

Then I sewed the black waistband on the gray pants, and vice versa, for a nice contrasting effect. Done! It only took me about an hour to sew up both pairs of longies once I got all the fabric cut. Easy!

And oh-so-cute...

I love these already! They fit Noob perfectly. I'm sure they'll see a lot of use during these last few weeks of winter, and even into the spring.

Vidia slippers

Littles somehow managed to lose one (only one!) of the Silvermist slippers I made for her a few months ago. I know it's somewhere in the house. But it's freezing here right now and she's been off school for the last three days due to snow/ice and I'm tired of seeing her poor bare feet around the house. So I decided to sew her a new pair.

This time, I asked Littles what color she wanted, and she chose purple. In the Disney Fairies world, purple is Vidia's color:

Vidia isn't one of the nicer fairies, but Littles loves her because she loves purple. I bought purple crushed panne months ago to make a Vidia costume for Littles (to go with her Tinker Bell and Silvermist costumes), but I haven't gotten around to it. Since she requested purple slippers, I figured I'd make them to match the Vidia costume that I will sew eventually :)

I used the same technique as the Silvermist slippers: Sew Darling Mini Mocs pattern, crushed panne for the outer, fleece for the inner, and anti-slip fabric for the sole.

Hopefully we can keep track of these ones :)

More cloth wipes

Cloth wipes are such an easy, quick project for when I have a few free minutes. The ones I made last night have a layer of flannel and a layer of terry. Both from the remnants bin at Joann's, of course! Remnants work well for wipes, because you really only need about 7" or 8" of fabric, and they are cheap -- which is good, because who wants to spend a lot of money on something that will be used to wipe poop?

Diapers

I've been meaning to do some diaper sewing for a while now, but finally got some time and motivation to sit down and do it.

Last week, I sewed up an aplix pocket diaper, since we could still use a few more to send to Noob's sitter. I used the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern, with a PUL outer (purchased from Joann's) and a suedecloth inner (butter suedecloth from Hancock Fabrics).

It turned out OK. It's usable, and cute! But the pocket is so narrow that it is very hard to stuff. I want to try again. The pattern has the option for a "nighttime diaper" that is a little wider, so I think that will work better.

But in the meantime, I wanted to create an entry for the Cloth Diaper Foundation's Sew a Diaper contest. I used an old jersey cotton sheet set with a Texas flag print on it. These used to be our everyday sheets, but we haven't used them in years. Hubby found them in our bedroom closet a few months ago and was about to throw them out, but I snagged them, thinking they'd make great diapers. And they do!

Interior with snap-in soaker:

I made a medium. Noob is right in the middle of the listed weight range, but the pattern warns that stretchy fabrics (like the jersey cotton I used) will fit longer. Indeed, Noob was on the smallest snap settings, and the diaper was just a tad bit bigger than I would like. Not that it matters, since I wasn't planning to keep the diaper anyway!

The diaper turned out well, but I'm not thrilled with the La Di Da pattern. It's very good, but I find the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern easier to follow, and it has tons more options. I think it fits Noob better, too.

As long as I was sending off this diaper, I decided to throw in a few more diapers that I've sewed in the past and ended up not using. I made this one prior to Noob's arrival, when we didn't know that he was a boy. It's made from the free Rita's Rump Pocket pattern. The material is flannel from two receiving blankets that we used with Littles. The RRP pattern doesn't include closures; you use diaper pins or a Snappi to secure the diaper. One nifty thing is that this makes the diaper fully reversible, so you can put either side facing out:

I also sent some newborn sized wool longies (pants). Wool makes a great diaper cover! You use it directly over a non-waterproof diaper, like a fitted or prefold. It absorbs up to 30% of its weight in liquid. Also, the lanolin in wool neutralizes urine, so you can use wool over and over and over again and it doesn't stink! I loved wool on Littles, so I sewed a ton of it when I was pregnant with Noob, but I found that I didn't like it as much for him as a newborn. Hence why these longies went unused. They are all made out of old sweaters that I bought at a thrift store:

I've started liking wool again on Noob. I've got a huge box of old sweaters that I want to turn into longies. So many potential projects, so little time :)

All of this stuff will be auctioned off at the Cloth Diaper Foundation's Hyena Cart site, starting next week!