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.