Sewing for a cause

The organizer of the cloth diaper group here in Dallas recently started up a charity called the DFW Cloth Diaper Project. It aims to provide free cloth diapers (along with education on how to use them) to homeless teen moms in our area. I can't even imagine the challenges that these girls are facing, so if they can not have to choose between food and diapers -- well, that's a small step in the right direction.

So, Fabric.com had a ridiculous blow-out deal on PUL last week. With prices dipping down to just a little over $3/yard, I decided I had to buy a bunch of it. Sadly, it's all girly colors, nothing I want to use on Noob... but I figured it would be perfect for sewing diapers for the charity. I have so much of it that I couldn't possibly sew it all up myself, so I'm hoping to teach some classes on cloth diaper sewing and get some other local ladies working on this. Yeah, me, teaching cloth diaper sewing classes -- it's the blind leading the blind, I tell ya.

Anyway. Once the PUL arrived, I got to work on my first diaper. Of course, I had to try out a new pattern :) This one is the free Sprout Snap pattern. It doesn't come with sewing instructions, but since all diapers sew up pretty much the same, it's easy enough to do if you've sewn a few other diapers before.

The reason I chose this one over the ones I already have is that it's a one size pattern. I kinda prefer sized patterns to use with Noob, in part because I think they're a little trimmer, in part because he'll likely potty train out of the mediums he's wearing now, so they're basically the one size/only size he'll need :). But for this project, obviously it's a lot more efficient to sew a single one-size diaper versus a small diaper, a medium diaper, and a large diaper.

Here it is. PUL outer (from fabric.com), suedecloth inner (Alova suedecloth from Joann's):

You can see the crossover snaps on the wings to allow it to fit a smaller baby:

Hard to see, but that's another welt pocket on the inside:

Of course, I needed a model. Hubby wasn't thrilled with me using Noob to model a pink diaper. Oh well :) He didn't seem to mind!

Noob is on the medium rise setting. One thing I didn't like is that in between the two rise snaps, the PUL sticks out. The snaps keep the sides of the PUL folded under, but in the middle, where there is no snap, it unfolds and points out. This doesn't affect function, but it looks funny. Maybe I'll add a third rise snap in the middle to prevent this.

I didn't topstitch the leg elastic. The pocket is just big enough to fit an insert as it is, so I knew it would be too small if I did a casing. As with the other two pockets I sewed, the inner fabric has a tendency to roll out. (It's always the left leg that does this -- it has to have something to do with the way I'm sewing it.) But those other pockets have been holding up well, despite my fears that the inner rolling out would lead to wicking. So I think it will be OK. And it really is so much easier to sew this way. In this picture, you can see the tan suedecloth rolling out at the leg:

Looking forward to sewing more of these and putting some other babies in cloth!