Newborn pockets

I haven't been using pockets very much on Q. I don't know why. Prefolds are just easier to deal with, I guess.

I did make these diapers as a gift for a friend who was due in September:

From left to right: Rocket Bottoms size 1, Rocket Bottoms Totally Squared One Size, Rocket Bottoms Totally Squared Newborn/Small. Plus a wetbag. The diapers are all PUL outers (from fabric.com), suedecloth inners (alova suedecltoh from Joann's).

Here's Q trying on the two Totally Squared diapers. She is about 1 month old and 11 lbs, and she's trying them on over a prefold (because I was already running late to my friend's baby shower and didn't have time to wash them if she soiled them!). This pattern is large. She was swimming in the one size diaper, and even the newborn/small was on the large side when using the smallest setting!

This is another Totally Squared OS that I made recently. I did this one as a cover/AI2 shell, with a PUL outer, microfleece inner, and cotton interlock tabs. She is almost 4 months old and 14 lbs, and this is still pretty large on her, on the smallest setting:

I'm ehhhhh on the OS pattern right now, because it is so big. I should really try the NB/small pattern again, to see if I like that one any better.

On the other hand, I love the regular Rocket Bottoms pattern. I made a diaper for Q that's identical to the one I sewed for my friend, and it's one of my favorites. She is about 1 month old and 11 lbs in this picture, and she's wearing it on the second of three rise settings. After this, I moved it down to the smallest rise setting. She is now 4 months and 14 lbs, and is back on the second rise setting. It fits nicely and works really well stuffed with one of the trimmed newborn prefolds.

Still, despite the great fit, she did have a leak in this diaper yesterday -- leaks in prefolds + covers are virtually nonexistent. Hence why I say prefolds are just easier to deal with.

More baby gifts

Seriously, there will be a lot of these this year. Two of my close friends have already had babies, and there are three more due between now and September. Plus myself, of course!

One of the remaining three had her baby shower yesterday. She is the daughter of a good friend of ours, the kids' regular babysitter, and just an all-around awesome young lady, so I wanted to do something really nice for her. She decided to cloth diaper as well (seriously, I don't proselytize cloth diapering, but it's really cool that so many of my friends are coming to it on their own) and that made it easy! And since she's expecting a girl, this gave me a great excuse to use up a ton of girly PUL that I got on clearance from Fabric.com a while back. (If Q is a girl, I'm really going to have some fun :)

Top row:
Rocket Bottoms In A Snap cover, size NB. Outer is Soft 'n Comfy fabric from Joann's. Inner is PUL from Fabric.com.
Rocket Bottoms pocket, step 1 (NB/small). Outer is PUL from Fabric.com. Inner is alova suedecloth from Joann's.

Bottom row:
Witteybums cover, size small. All PUL, purchased directly from another sewing mama.
Rainy Days fitted, step 1 (NB/small). Outer is french terry, hidden layer of bamboo fleece, inner layer of bamboo velour, soaker of bamboo fleece topped with bamboo velour. All purchased directly from other sewing mamas.

Behind: Wetbag, made with PUL from Fabric.com. I usually sew the zipper on top of these, but decided to try it on the side, like this video tutorial from Wazoodle shows. I love how it turned out!

How did they turn out? Well, I think the In A Snap cover is really tiny. It may fit for the first few weeks, but I'll likely make another one in size small. On the flip side, the Rainy Days fitted seems quite large. I made it with Lastin elastic -- it's a little trickier to work with than regular polybraid, because if you stretch it as tight as it will go, it will be way too tight. But I may not have stretched it enough on this diaper. I'll have to keep experimenting, because the nice thing about Lastin (as the name implies) is that it lasts a lot longer, rather than getting all stretched out like polybraid does over time. Anyway, that diaper should work fine, it may just be more of a small/medium than a newborn/small. The other two patterns, I already sewed up for one of my other friends, and they turned out well this time around, too.

Close-up of the "handmade" tag on the In A Snap cover. I really like these for adding a bit of a professional touch. They're also a handy spot to put size tags -- I don't always put size tags on stuff I sew for my kids, because I can remember what size things are, but for gifts for other people, I figure it might be helpful.

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!

Fleece: Are you ready for some football?

 

Ah, fleece. If you've been following my blog from the beginning, you know that "fleece" was the most-used tag in my tag cloud for quite a while. Then summer in Texas hit... and fleece is not exactly my fabric of choice after 64 days (and counting) of temperatures over 100 degrees.

But we've been preparing our house to put it on the market, which has entailed a major clean-up of my sewing room. And oh my goodness, I have a lot of fleece. Mostly from the great Joann's remnant bin sale late last year. So, my goal over the next few months is to sew a lot of it up.

With football season right around the corner, I figured I'd start with some football-themed items. Starting with the fleece shorties shown above on Noob. Here's the back:

As I've mentioned previously, I'm an Eagles fan and Hubby is a Cowboys fan. Not surprisingly, Cowboys fabric is easy to find here in Dallas, but I had to order this Eagles fleece online. Well worth it, though. I love how these shorties turned out.

I put in a "hammock-style" extra layer in the wetzone, which allows me to use these directly over non-waterproof diapers, such as prefolds. The extra layer is just a strip of fleece, to provide extra protection from wetness. It makes for really easy diaper changes when we're hanging out at home. Here's what the inside looks like:

I didn't make this shirt -- my parents bought it for Noob. But it makes for a nice set!

Of course, Hubby would never let me get away with sewing Eagles stuff but not Cowboys stuff. And anyway, I have Cowboys fleece coming out my ears. So I sewed not one but two Cowboys soakers. Again, these are intended for use directly over a non-waterproof diaper, such as a prefold -- but they are also just cute and fun for wearing around the house!

I used embroidered fleece on the first one and it turned out OK, but I don't really like the partial star on the back:

 

The second one turned out just about perfect! I thought I had some action shots of Noob wearing it, but I guess not. Too bad, because it's so cute! And that is a high compliment coming from an Eagles fan :)

 

Finally, a soaker that Hubby and I can both approve of:

 

A couple of specifics for these projects:

• I used the Katrina longies pattern to make the shorties, and the Katrina soaker pattern for fleece to make the soakers. They are all size large.
• As I mentioned, I did a hammock-style extra layer in the shorties. For the soakers, I used an extra wetzone layer.
• I tried one of the soakers a few nights ago over a fitted diaper, and it held up great!
• The contrasting waistbands and leg cuffs all came from fleece from Joann's remnants bin. The remnants bin is a perfect place to look for contrasting fleece, because you only need a small amount (about 4") to make waistbands/leg cuffs. So it's easy to find for super-cheap in the remnants bin.
• These sew up fast. Less than an hour from cutting to done. And I am not a fast sewer, by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm sure there will be many more fleece projects to come, so stay tuned :)

Diapers for traveling: More serging practice

We're on our long-awaited vacation to Panama! I wanted to bring mostly Best Bottoms along on this trip, because they take up a lot less space than the diapers we usually use. Here are four Best Bottoms diaper changes (a shell with an insert + 3 additional inserts) on the left, next to four of our normal BumGenius diapers on the right:

I have one Best Bottoms shell (the brown one shown above) and had worked out a trade for two more, but unfortunately,the woman I was trading with goofed, and didn't send out the other two shells until just this week -- too late for this trip. Oh well, I'll have them for our next vacation, to Florida in September. In the meantime, I really needed at least one more shell for this trip, so I made one, using the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern, size medium. The exterior is a 100% polyester print, and the interior is PUL, sewed so that the "shiny" side is exposed so that it can be wiped clean if it gets dirty:

I added snaps to the interior to secure the Best Bottoms inserts. I meant to do it before sewing the diaper together so that I could hide the snaps, but I forgot, so I had to do them so that they're exposed on the diaper exterior, as you see above. Here is a shot of the interior, alone and then with a large size insert:

The sizing of the shell isn't quite right: It's a little too long for medium size inserts, and a little too short for large size inserts. It's also a little wider than it needs to be. I doubt I'll sew another one of these, but if I do, I'll either shorten or lengthen the rise slightly (depending on whether I want to use medium or large inserts with it), and I'll use the DDU pattern without color sides, rather than the pattern with color sides. But we've been using this shell for the past few days on our trip and it is perfectly functional. And really cute, and soft! I have tons more of that dino print (I got 2 yards of it for just $3, from a destash at Top Shelf Fabrics!), so I'm excited to make some other stuff with it.

I also needed more inserts to go with the shells, so I got a lot more practice serging. I'm really starting to love it! It is so much faster than sewing. I made all of these inserts the night before we left, after the kids went to bed, and while packing for the trip -- that's how quickly they come together, thanks to the serger:

The top four are regular inserts and the bottom four are overnight inserts (with snaps on both sides). There is one medium size and three large size inserts of each type. The regular inserts are 3 layers of either bamboo fleece or bamboo/hemp fleece topped with 1 layer of bamboo velour. The overnight inserts are four layers of hemp fleece. All the fabric is from Nature's Fabrics. I made one more the night before the trip, which isn't pictured -- it's 3 layers of bamboo/hemp fleece topped with a layer of suedecloth for a stay-dry feel.

With that number of layers, the regular inserts aren't quite as absorbent as I'd like on their own. They do last about 1-2 hours on Noob, and it's nice having the option to add an overnight insert underneath if I need more absorbency.

These aren't the greatest pictures, but here are some action shots of the shell with a large size insert inside. It's not as trim as the real Best Bottoms shell, but it's fine:

Thanks to all this work, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable with my new serger now. Maybe even comfortable enough to try some "real" serged projects when we get home!

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! :)