Another diaper

Here's what I sewed up last night. No action shots, as I didn't have time, and now we're leaving for the long weekend.

Very Baby Basic AIO pattern. This is a "medium long" size (see tips) -- basically, I added about 2" to the rise of the medium pattern. Outer is the same camouflage knit that I used on my last diaper. Hidden layer of bamboo fleece inside. Inner is suedecloth from Joann's. Soaker is a layer of bamboo fleece and a layer of suedecloth.

Crossover aplix tabs:

Suedecloth is stay dry, so I'm hoping this will make a good overnight diaper. I'm just a little concerned because synthetic materials like suedecloth tend to hold onto stink more than natural fibers like bamboo. We'll see how it goes!

While I didn't take pictures, I did try this on Noob briefly this morning, and it seemed to fit well. Definitely a higher rise than the regular medium size, so no fear of plumbers crack :) But the waist is still a little bigger than I'd like, especially considering that Noob is towards the top of the listed weight range. Maybe when I get back from our weekend trip, I'll experiment with adding a few inches to the rise of the small pattern, to see if that gives me something that's long enough in the rise without being so big in the waist.

Camouflage

Fabric.com has free shipping for orders over a very reasonable $35, so I usually throw some extra fabric into my order to get to that threshold. As part of my recent order that included the "Army Strong" fabric and the fabric for another project (which I'm still working on and will show off in a few weeks here), I threw in some extra knits that were on sale. One was a camouflage print that I thought Hubby would like almost as much as "Army Strong."

This is the Very Baby Basic AIO pattern again, size medium. I've realized that the medium size is just a little short for Noob in the rise -- it works OK for now, but I know he'll outgrow it pretty soon. So I'm currently experimenting with a "medium long" size, which is the same width with a longer rise. But I wanted to sew up one more medium using this camo fabric, to see how it fit. It is stretchy, and stretchy fabrics generally fit a wider size range.

I also wanted to try snaps, to see if the stretchy fabric made it easier to get a good fit with snaps. The Basic AIO pattern only comes with markings for aplix, but there are instructions on this page for making it with snaps instead. I opted to add the snaps prior to sewing the diaper, so that the snap caps wouldn't be exposed on the diaper interior. That also made it pretty easy to get the snaps lined up fairly straight.

By the way, that tutorial calls for three snaps on the wings, just like the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern. I had complained about that when I sewed a DDU with snaps, but now I realize that the third snap is to prevent wing droop. It works well!

I did crossover snaps to allow the diaper to fit smaller waists. This is covered in the tutorial linked above:

Diaper front, fully unsnapped. I forgot to make the bottom row of snaps one snap shorter than the top row. No biggie; that last snap just won't ever get used. Actually, I don't think the last two snaps on the bottom row will ever get used.

Diaper inner. Bamboo velour with a hidden layer of bamboo fleece. See how the snap caps are not visible on the inside front of the diaper? The soaker is a layer of bamboo velour and a layer of bamboo fleece, trifolded. I made this soaker a little longer than the one I did on the Army Strong diaper (it's 14" long by 12" wide, compared to 12" by 12" for the Army Strong soaker) because I've found that the Army Strong soaker is a little shorter than I'd like once the diaper is put on.

Action shots. You can see that the fabric really does stretch to cover Noob well in the rise:

 

I also like how the stretchy fabric helps the snaps fit right. Snapping diapers normally bug me, but this one doesn't. Although I will say that Noob is towards the top of the medium size's listed weight range (range is given as 15 lbs to 25 lbs, and he is 23 lbs right now) and he is on the crossover snaps -- the fabric stretches that much. I'm not sure this will fit a baby who is lower in the weight range. If I make one of these out of stretchy fabric again, I may shorten the wings a little bit, so that it will fit skinnier babies.

 

I've been working on another project with camouflage material. I got blue camouflage fleece to help "pad" another fabric.com order, so I decided to sew Noob a pair of pajama pants. I normally use the Katrina longies pattern to do this, but it's really cut to fit over big cloth diapers, and I have some upcoming projects where I need to sew pants for non-cloth diapered babies. I already have the McCall's 5963 pattern (it's what I used to make those awful footed PJs), and it includes a pants pattern, so I gave it a whirl. I made a size large, which is listed as fitting 22-25 lbs.

It seems to be really big, especially in the rise, but it matches up almost exactly with a pair of Carter's (store-bought) knit pants in 18 month size (on the left). It's bigger than Katrina pattern size mediums (on the right), but that makes sense, since Noob has really outgrown that pair of longies. You can see how the rise on the longies matches the rise on the new pants, even though the longies are made to fit a smaller baby:

 

Action shots over a prefold (pretty close to disposable diaper trimness). They are a little baggy, but they don't fall down, which is my main concern!

 

But they are easily big enough to work as pajama pants over a seriously fluffy bum. In these pictures, Noob is wearing the pants over the wool soaker from this post and the camo diaper. This is bulky, but it's a bulletproof overnight setup! The diaper is absorbent enough and the soaker is thick enough that I would be shocked if anything leaked out, but if it did, the pajama pants offer yet another layer of protection.

 

I always like to mention that the fleece pajama pants "trick" works with disposable diapers, too! I know a lot of people struggle with their kids leaking out of disposable diapers overnight. Putting a pair of fleece pajama pants like these over a disposable diaper can help keep the sheets dry in case of leaks.

Anyway, there you have it! My camouflage projects! I still have plenty of both fabrics left over, so I'm sure you'll see it again. I'm a little bit worried about the quality of both -- the diaper is already fading a little and the pants have some noticeable pilling after just one wash. Hopefully, they won't continue to age that quickly.

Two simple dresses (that Littles refuses to wear :)

I know I've been somewhat diaper-obsessed as of late, but I've managed to squeeze in a few non-diaper-related projects as well.

I made two simple dresses for Littles:

 

The one on the left is made from pre-shirred fabric from Joann's. It's ridiculously easy to make a dress out of this stuff -- just cut and hem it to the right length, add some straps (I made straps out of the bottom of the fabric, but you could just use ribbons if you wanted), and go!

The downside is that it's normally super expensive -- about 50 cents an inch, I think. But it was on sale for 50% off and then Littles found this particular piece in the remnants bin, so it was another 50% off, bringing it down to under $4 for the piece. And it is really beautiful!

Unfortunately, the remnant was just a tad bit smaller than what I would have cut had I been choosing the length, so it's fairly tight around Littles' torso. Probably because of that, she hasn't wanted to wear it a whole lot, but I did get a few action shots of her wearing it:

 

The dress on the right above is a standard pillowcase dress. I can't even remember what blog I got the directions off of, but if you search around for "pillowcase dress tutorials," you'll find lots of options! Good thing this one was cheap (I made it out of an old pillowcase that we had around the house) because Littles refuses to wear it! Oh well.

Hmmm, maybe I should stick with diapers :)

Army strong

I saw this diaper at the Goodmama stocking last week. Hubby is former Army National Guard, so I knew he'd love it:

If you're not familiar with Goodmamas, they are the height of insanity in the cloth diapering world. For starters, they start at $35 new, with some selling for over $60. Yes, for something designed to catch your kid's poop. Then, some of the outer fabrics are made in very small quantities, so those diapers become collector's items, for lack of a better term, and can sell for ridiculously high prices. I think the highest I've ever seen was $215. Again, for something designed to catch your kid's poop.

The funny thing about all of this is that the fabrics used are nothing special. I found this particular one (well, the tan version) on fabric.com for less than $10/yard. A few hours of work and I had this:

Back:

Entire outer. This is the Very Baby Basic AIO pattern again:

The inner has a hidden layer of bamboo fleece and then a layer of yummy soft bamboo velour, both from Nature's Fabrics. The snap-in soaker is a layer of bamboo fleece and a layer of bamboo velour, trifolded.

I made a matching shirt as well! I took one of the onesies I bought during the Babies R Us clearance that I mentioned a while back. It is Gerber 24-month size, but since Gerber runs small, it's closer to 18-month size or even a large 12-month size. I don't really like onesies with cloth diapers, so I cut it off just above the leg holes and hemmed it to turn it into a regular t-shirt. Then I cut out some small pieces from the Army fabric, folded under the edges (the fabric is woven, so unfinished edges do fray), and sewed them down.

Front:

Back:

Action shots:

I love how this turned out! And it was much faster than waiting up to 2 months for the Goodmama version to ship! (Not to mention the fact that I have enough fabric left for probably three more of these sets... :)

More snap conversions

I had a business trip on Monday and Tuesday of this week, so I took along some "travel projects. One of the projects was a bunch of BumGenius 3.0 diapers (purchased for $2 apiece during a recent Cotton Babies "last chance" sale) in need of snap conversion. I discovered that you can take all the tools required for snap conversions and elastic replacements, including needles, a small pair of scissors, and even a small awl, in your carry-on bag! Cool!

One of the things I don't like about snapping diapers is how it takes me a moment to find the right set of snaps to use. And every moment counts when you have a wiggly toddler on the changing table! To help speed up that process, I decided to do alternating snap colors. The result:

So, Noob is on the second smallest snap setting, which means I know I need to use the contrasting snaps (dark green on the light green diaper, and white on the light blue diaper) closest to the middle of the diaper. When he moves to the next snap setting, I'll know I need to use the non-contrasting snaps in between the two contrasting set of snaps. Hopefully that makes sense.

I felt like the contrasting effect was a little too obvious, so on the last one I did, I took a more subtle approach. Can you see the contrast?

(You can see the guidelines I used for snap placement in this picture. I did them before leaving on the trip, using a yard stick, a rotary cutting mat, and a Mark-B-Gone marker to get as accurate as possible. The Mark-B-Gone marker washes right out!)

The contrast is hard to see if you aren't looking for it, but fairly easy to spot if you are. What I did was for the snaps where I wanted contrast, I used an orange socket but a light yellow cap. So, the little dot in the middle of the snap is light yellow, but the socket itself is orange. Here is a close-up. Can you see it now?

I think they turned out pretty well! I have tons more "last chance" BG's, so I've got something to keep me occupied on many future trips :)

Very Baby fitted

I've already shown off a couple of diapers I've sewn using the Darling Diapers Unlimited (DDU) pattern. I love the way DDU's fit Noob, I love how the pattern includes a ton of different sewing options (aplix vs. snaps, front-closing vs. side-closing, rounded wings vs. square wings, pocket vs. fitted vs. cover, etc.), and I love the detailed instructions included. But one minor problem is that if you choose to sell the diapers you sew from it, you can only charge the cost of your materials. (Unless you opt to pay $700 to become a licensee, which obviously is not going to happen for me.) Now, I'm not looking to open a diaper-sewing business or anything like that, but it would be nice to have the option to, say, sew up a second diaper using leftover fabric from something I made for Noob, and then sell it.

So I started looking for diaper patterns with less-restrictive licensing requirements, and I came across the Very Baby patterns. They have no licensing fees, no required review of a sewn diaper, etc. I've also had professionally-made Very Baby diapers in the past, so I knew that they fit well. I figured I'd give the patterns a shot!

I selected the Very Baby Basic AIO pattern, because it is sized (I love the trimness of sized diapers), it's intended primarily for aplix closures (my favorite), and there are instructions available for making it as a fitted and as a pocket. Here's my first shot at it:

I used flannel for this diaper, because I have a lot of it sitting around, and it's not stretchy so it gives me a good idea of the sizing when using other non-stretchy fabrics (such as PUL). The outer and soaker are from a 100% cotton Carter's receiving blanket. The inner is yellow flannel from Hancock Fabrics, originally purchased to make Noob's Book of Family, but I have a ton left over.

I did a trifold soaker. I think this is now my favorite soaker type :) It's just two pieces of flannel sewn together, turned, and topstitched. Very very easy to make. Since it's a total of six layers when folded, it should be pretty absorbent, but since it's only two layers unfolded, it should wash up well and dry quickly. Love it. Here's a shot showing the soaker unfolded. You can see how it snaps into the diaper at the top:

On the bum:

 

I don't like the fit of this one quite as much as my DDU's. For starters, even though Noob is near the top of the weight limit for the medium size, he still needs the crossover tabs around the waist. I think this would be better for a chubbier baby. But it does fit well enough, and it was very easy to sew. I think I'll do a few more of these, and experiment with alternative construction methods, and see how they turn out!

PUL diaper cover

I really don't know what possessed me to sew this, as I barely use PUL covers anymore, now that I have so much wonderful wool. But, well, I have all that leftover aqua PUL... and the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern has instructions for using it to sew covers... and then I was at Joann's the other day buying regular elastic during their 50% off notions wall sale, and I saw that they have fold-over elastic (FOE) there, too. Soooooo, I bought some.

This was my first time sewing with FOE. Essentially, it's 1" wide elastic that has a little crease running down the middle, so you can fold it over (hence the name!) the edge of your garment. If you just fold it over, it makes a nice neat binding, but if you stretch it while sewing, it works like regular elastic. That allows it to be used to bind and elasticize simultaneously on a one-layer cover.

It was a little tricky to get the hang of sewing with FOE, especially around the curves in the diaper pattern. Even after I finished, I wasn't at all sure that the cover had turned out well. To my surprise, when I tried it on Noob this morning, it fit great! It's nice and trim, which I love. Also, one of the things I don't like about most of my other PUL covers is that they are not wide enough through the crotch, so it is hard to tuck all of Noob's prefold under the cover. (And not tucking a prefold under the cover is a sure-fire way to get a leak.) With this cover, I was able to make it really wide, so it easily covers the entire prefold.

So, I don't know why I sewed it, but I'm glad I did! :)

Woven fitted diaper

Pattern: Darling Diapers Unlimited, size medium

Materials: Inner is one layer of hemp/cotton fleece, from Nature's Fabrics. Outer fabric is woven cotton. I originally bought this about a year ago, from the remnants bin at Joann's, to make wetbags. I had a large enough piece left over after making the wetbags, so I figured I'd try it on a diaper!

Diaper sewing is definitely getting easier for me. The elastic has always been the most challenging part, followed closely by the snaps or aplix. This time, I do have a few slightly crooked snaps, but the elastic is perfect! Yay!

Where I still need more practice is on sewing the soakers. For this one, I made a double long soaker, with two layers of hemp/cotton fleece. (So, four layers when it's folded over.) It ended up being a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit long. Oops :)

But it does work fine folded over:

It's a snap-in soaker, so it's easy enough to switch out. I might try again, and make it a little shorter this time :)

Action shots:

I was wondering if a woven cotton outer would work for a diaper, and it does! Which is great, because woven cotton is relatively inexpensive and holds up very well to washing. Good to know!

I don't love the snaps, though. It's a little hard to get the right fit with them. The placement is particularly weird on this diaper pattern -- you can see in the first picture that there are three snaps on each wing, rather than the typical one or two. I don't know, I just don't like the way that they work, so I doubt I'll make very many more snapping diapers from this pattern. The aplix ones are great, though.

Noob has already worn this diaper overnight a couple of times. Admittedly, he's not a super heavy wetter, but the diaper worked great -- it wasn't even fully saturated in the morning. Hubby likes the ease of use of a pocket diaper for overnights, but I really love fitteds under wool covers, so I might sew up a few more of these. They are easy enough to sew (I loooooooove not having to deal with PUL!) and so soft and cute!