Newborn diapers and big sister gifts

One of my good friends just had her second baby a few weeks ago. She's cloth diapering, so I figured I'd try out some newborn diaper patterns!

If you're planning to sew newborn diapers, you must check out the Mama Kat Diapers blog. She reviews tons of newborn diaper patterns (including many free ones) and provides pictures and great information.

I knew my friend was planning to use prefolds and covers, so I wanted to sew a few more covers for her. The first one I made uses the Bramblestitches pattern, size newborn. Here is a link to the pattern, and here is a link to the magazine article explaining how to sew it.

The outer is a poly print, from the Top Shelf Fabrics destash.

I used a "Handmade" tag with size tag on the back :)

The inner is PUL. I chose to sew it with the fabric side facing out, to be softer on tender newborn skin, but you could also sew it with the shiny side facing out if you wanted it to be wipeable. I've done that before, on a cover I sewed for Noob, and had no irritation problems.

Although this was newborn size, it turned out pretty big. I'd say it's more like a small size.

I think it would work well over a Snappi'd or pinned prefold. But I know many people like to just trifold prefolds and stick them in a cover. I didn't know which camp my friend is in, so I decided to sew her another cover that facilitated trifolding.

I settled on the Witteybums pattern. I forgot to post pictures of this, but I sewed up this pattern months ago for some diapers for Noob, and absolutely loved it. I did an all-in-two style diaper for Noob, but the pattern also has a neat option to make a cover with flaps to secure a trifolded prefold, very similar to a Flip cover.

I first made a newborn size cover. I knew from the diapers I sewed for Noob that this pattern has a very narrow crotch. Since it needs to fit over a prefold, I widened the crotch about 1/4", per the Mama Kat Diapers blog.

It turned out teeny tiny! Here it is next to a Proraps newborn cover. Noob was 8 lbs 11 oz at birth, and we used the Proraps covers for only about a week, until his umbilical cord fell off. Then we moved on to larger covers. The Witteybums newborn cover is even smaller than the Proraps! I'd say it's more like preemie size.

I'm going to keep it and see if it fits Q at all, but I decided to sew a small size cover for my friend. This time, I widened the crotch by about 1/2". Here are the two completed covers.

Insides of the covers. The outer is just a single layer of PUL, and then the flaps are PUL as well.

Here's the small cover with a standard infant (green edge) prefold trifolded inside:

Comparison shots of a Bummis Super Whisper Wrap size small (on the left) with the Bramblestitches NB cover (middle) and Witteybums small (right). The BSWW was one of my favorite covers for Noob. It fit him from when we stopped using the Proraps at 1 week old to a few months old. The Bramblestitches cover, in particular, has a very similar shape to the BSWW.

Finally, I decided to make my friend one pocket diaper to try out. This is a Rocket Bottoms step 1 diaper. I really like the idea of two-step diapers like this, especially when I'm sewing my own. The "step 1" diaper has a snap-down rise, allowing you to adjust it to fit from roughly 7-21 pounds. So it's designed to fit newborns (unlike one-size diapers, which are typically too bulky), but you don't put a ton of work into a diaper that's going to be outgrown in a few short weeks. Then there's a "step 2" that fits from roughly 18-40 lbs, so it fits even longer than the typical one-size diaper.

This was my first time sewing with loop fabric. Rather than just putting a narrow strip of aplix or touchtape on the front of the diaper, I put a big panel of loop fabric. Supposedly, this gives more adustability, since the tabs can be attached anywhere on the panel.

This was also my first time sewing with pre-cut aplix tabs, rather than cutting my own tabs from a strip of aplix. Very handy and professional-looking.

No pictures of the inner, but it's suedecloth (white butter suedecloth from Hancock's, my favorite!) with a modified welt pocket. For a soaker, I was hoping to use some of the Cotton Babies microfiber inserts that I have around the house, but they were just a little too wide. So I did three layers of heavy bamboo fleece, following the pattern included with the Rocket Bottoms pattern.

All three diapers together:

Of course, I couldn't forget the big sister! I made her a crayon wallet, with a personalized name tag on the front:

I got the fabric a while back, on clearance at Walmart! They have some cut fat quarter bundles that include contrasting fabrics. Perfect for this crayon wallet, which calls for a contrasting fabric for the pockets on the inside.

I goofed, and made the pockets for the crayons (on the left) too long. Weird, because I followed this tutorial exactly and it shows the shorter pockets, and when I made this for another friend a few months ago, I ended up with shorter crayon pockets. Oh well. It makes the wallet slightly harder to close properly, and it makes it harder to get the crayons out (you kinda have to push them out from the bottom of the pocket), but it works OK. One nice thing is that then the crayons don't "color" all over the rest of the interior of the crayon wallet.

This was all lots of fun to sew and I love how everything turned out!

Do-it-yourself maternity clothes

I hate buying maternity clothes. They seem like such a waste of money, especially considering Q is probably our last baby.

Unfortunately, even though this is my third pregnancy, I don't have a ton of usable maternity clothes. Noob was born in January, and Littles was born in June but in northern California, so a lot of my maternity clothes are long sleeved. They're not doing me much good now that it's already in the 80s in Texas! And I don't really want to hide my bump in bulky t-shirts for the next three months.

Now, cheap maternity clothes... that, I could do!

Enter Joann's clearance, and my local thrift store. (Please ignore my terrible hair and tired look in these pictures. I had to take them late on Saturday night because I'm on a business trip this week.)

The shirt is a "boyfriend T" that was on clearance at Joann's for $3, plus I had a coupon for 25% off. Not bad. I made it into a rouched maternity shirt, using the instructions on this blog. It's super easy. You basically sew elastic into the seam allowance on the sides of the shirt, which makes it more fitted around your belly.

I got a size large -- normally I wear a small or a medium. But it's still a little short on me, especially after making it rouched. It would've worked better for me earlier in this pregnancy, or with my earlier pregnancies, where my belly didn't grow as quickly. Oh well, not much money spent, and it'll probably work well postpartum!

The pants are from one of my local thrift stores. I do most of my shopping for kids' clothes there, and on a trip a few months ago, I found that they have a whole maternity section, too. Even better, they do "99 cent Mondays," every Monday, where all items with a certain tag color are 99 cents. So I got these pants for just 99 cents!

These are actually maternity pants, in my correct size, but the elastic waistband was all stretched out, so they didn't stay up. But that's easy enough to fix!

I debated a couple of different methods, and finally decided to sew in a Bella Band. Bella Bands are tubes of fabric designed to use over unbuttoned pre-pregnancy pants, so that you can get more wear out of them. I also use them to hold up maternity pants that like to fall down... so a no-sew solution to this particular problem would have been to just use the Bella Band over the pants. Done.

But I find it to be a pain to deal with two separate pieces of fabric whenever I have to go to the bathroom (which is kind of often these days). And I happened to have an extra Bella Band. I bought a khaki-colored one at a consignment store for about $5 back when I was pregnant with Noob, and liked it enough that I asked for a navy-colored one for Christmas this year. I've used the navy-colored one a lot, because it goes so well with jeans, which is what I wear most of the time. So the old khaki one has just been sitting in my drawer. I figured I'd sew it into the pants, rather than leaving it as a separate piece.

This was super easy as well. I made four evenly-spaced marks on the Bella Band, as well as the waistband of the pants. I turned the Bella Band inside out and put it over the waistband of the pants, then matched up the marks I'd made. Finally, I secured the Bella Band to the pants using a zig-zag stitch, stretching the Bella Band evenly as I sewed. (The marks helped me do this.) I could've cut off the original waistband, but I left it, just in case I messed things up sewing in the Bella Band.

The final result:

 

I looooooooooove these! The pants are so comfortable. And you can wear the Bella Band all sorts of different ways -- I actually have it folded in half in the picture above, but you can wear it all the way up over your belly, or fold it even more so it sits below your belly. Really versatile as your bump grows, and then shrinks again postpartum. No saggy maternity pants here!

Of course, Bella Bands normally retail for around $30, so it's hardly cost-effective to buy them just to sew into pants :) But as I said, I got this one for cheap at a consignment shop. And this blog also has instructions for DIY belly bands, or for converting regular pants to maternity pants. So, lots of cheap options for doing something like this.

In addition to the above, I got a couple of actual maternity shirts on clearance at Joann's as well, again for $3 minus 25% off. They fit fine as-is, but I decided to make these rouched as well, to add a nice little detail.

Love these shirts! They fit so nicely, especially rouched. I bought mediums, and they have enough length that I think they may last me till Q's birth!

By the way, the shorts I'm wearing were another "99 cent Mondays" purchase, so this whole maternity outfit cost just a little over $3. Now that, I don't mind paying!