Cloth training pants

Let me preface this post by stating that I think that training pants (cloth or disposable pull-ups) are the stupidest thing ever. LOL.

The idea behind them is that they provide a transition from diapers to underwear, allowing kids to use the potty but preventing messes when they don't. Which sounds great in theory. Problem is, at least with my kids, avoiding a mess is the reason that they use the potty. If they're in training pants, there's no motivation to use the potty. And so training pants are really no better than diapers.

For that reason, Littles went straight from diapers to underwear. And for that reason, when I work on potty training with Noob right now, he's bottomless.

Another thing that's stupid about cloth training pants in particular is that they are designed to be used for a limited period of time, when the child is transitioning from diapers to underwear. Presumably, the child should either "get" the concept of using the potty and transition to underwear, or not "get" it and go back to diapers. Either way, that eliminates the need for training pants. I can see how it might make sense to use a pack or two of disposable pullups during that transition period. But spending hundreds of dollars on a full stash of cloth training pants? That makes no sense to me.

So, why on earth am I sewing a full stash of cloth training pants? Well, Noob is starting at preschool this week, and his preschool requires pullups -- no diapers. So, I have to buy super-expensive disposable pullups, or spend hundreds of dollars on cloth training pants... or sew my own. Clearly, the last option won out :)

(If you're wondering what I did for Littles when she started at this preschool? Since I didn't know how to sew at the time, I found some cheap side-snapping diapers, and pre-snapped them so that they could be pulled on. After a few months, her teachers complained that she wasn't able to pull them up/down easily enough. Which was true. Luckily, she was on the verge of potty training anyway, so we switched her into underwear at that point and that was that. But given that Noob will have the same lead teacher, I knew that the side-snapping diapers wouldn't be an option this time around.)

Without further ado/ranting, here is my collection of stupid cloth training pants :) All are done using the Trimsies Trainer pattern, overnight style, size small, with a pocket.

Outer: PUL (purchased directly from another sewing mom)
Tabs: Cotton rib knit (Joann's)
Inner: Microfleece (wazoodle.com)

I did just a slit pocket on this one. Very easy -- basically, I cut a hole in the inner fabric using my rotary cutter, before sewing the outer and inner together. But I don't like the way it looks. It kinda "flips up," exposing the Lastin elastic at the back. Still, it's very serviceable.

Noob wasn't really cooperating for action shots, but here are a few. For these, I was using a two-layer Zorb II soaker that I made a while back. It fit OK, but these trainers are really trim through the crotch/front panel, so I knew they'd look better if I sewed up some soakers from the pattern itself. Which I've done now... I'll get to those in a little bit. Anyway, you'll see a little bit of poofiness in the front because the soaker that's in there isn't the best fit.

I wasn't quite sure that the side tabs were stretchy enough to be easy to pull up/down, and I thought it might be the microfleece inner limiting the stretch. So for the second pair I made, I used crushed panne velour for both the inner and the tabs, since it's super thin and stretchy. No pictures of this one, unfortunately :(

I found that the final product was just about as stretchy as my first version. And crushed panne is a maaaaaaaaajor pain in the butt to work with, because it's so thin and stretchy and slippery. It took me a lot longer to make, and since I have a lot of these to sew up in a short period of time, I decided to go back to microfleece inners.

Here are the next three that I made:

Inserts: These are made from the soaker pattern included with the trainer pattern. They fit great! They are three layers of heavy bamboo fleece (purchased from a coop). I originally thought I'd double them up, but I'm finding that just one is plenty absorbent! I'm loving this heavy bamboo fleece!

Top trainer outer: PUL (purchased from another sewing mom)
Tabs: Jersey cotton (from an old sheet set we have around the house, same one I used for the fitted diaper in this post)
Inner: Microfleece (wazoodle.com)

Middle trainer outer: PUL (fabric.com)
Tabs: Cotton interlock (naturesfabrics.com)
Inner: Microfleece (wazoodle.com)

Bottom trainer outer: PUL (purchased from another sewing mom)
Tabs and inner: Microchamois (purchased from a coop)

These all turned out really really well! We've been on vacation in China for the last ~2.5 weeks (which is why I haven't been sewing...) and I've used them all quite a bit and they've been working great. I especially love the bottom one with the microchamois tabs/inner -- microchamois is a type of microfleece that is slightly thinner and stretchier, and it really makes for a nice fit.

Oh! One thing I did on some of these trainers was sew a small patch of t-shirt fabric into the crotch. This is a feel-wet fabric (microfleece/microchamois are stay-dry), so hopefully that will help Noob with potty training. Here's what it looks like. Not real pretty on this trainer (it's obviously less visible on the trainers with white inners), but you can't see it once the trainer is on.

No action shots because I've been lazy, but I'm really happy with this pattern and these trainers. I have six now, which should be enough for one day at preschool... I'll be doing a lot of laundry at night until I can sew up a few more to add to the stash!

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.

Diapers

I've been meaning to do some diaper sewing for a while now, but finally got some time and motivation to sit down and do it.

Last week, I sewed up an aplix pocket diaper, since we could still use a few more to send to Noob's sitter. I used the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern, with a PUL outer (purchased from Joann's) and a suedecloth inner (butter suedecloth from Hancock Fabrics).

It turned out OK. It's usable, and cute! But the pocket is so narrow that it is very hard to stuff. I want to try again. The pattern has the option for a "nighttime diaper" that is a little wider, so I think that will work better.

But in the meantime, I wanted to create an entry for the Cloth Diaper Foundation's Sew a Diaper contest. I used an old jersey cotton sheet set with a Texas flag print on it. These used to be our everyday sheets, but we haven't used them in years. Hubby found them in our bedroom closet a few months ago and was about to throw them out, but I snagged them, thinking they'd make great diapers. And they do!

Interior with snap-in soaker:

I made a medium. Noob is right in the middle of the listed weight range, but the pattern warns that stretchy fabrics (like the jersey cotton I used) will fit longer. Indeed, Noob was on the smallest snap settings, and the diaper was just a tad bit bigger than I would like. Not that it matters, since I wasn't planning to keep the diaper anyway!

The diaper turned out well, but I'm not thrilled with the La Di Da pattern. It's very good, but I find the Darling Diapers Unlimited pattern easier to follow, and it has tons more options. I think it fits Noob better, too.

As long as I was sending off this diaper, I decided to throw in a few more diapers that I've sewed in the past and ended up not using. I made this one prior to Noob's arrival, when we didn't know that he was a boy. It's made from the free Rita's Rump Pocket pattern. The material is flannel from two receiving blankets that we used with Littles. The RRP pattern doesn't include closures; you use diaper pins or a Snappi to secure the diaper. One nifty thing is that this makes the diaper fully reversible, so you can put either side facing out:

I also sent some newborn sized wool longies (pants). Wool makes a great diaper cover! You use it directly over a non-waterproof diaper, like a fitted or prefold. It absorbs up to 30% of its weight in liquid. Also, the lanolin in wool neutralizes urine, so you can use wool over and over and over again and it doesn't stink! I loved wool on Littles, so I sewed a ton of it when I was pregnant with Noob, but I found that I didn't like it as much for him as a newborn. Hence why these longies went unused. They are all made out of old sweaters that I bought at a thrift store:

I've started liking wool again on Noob. I've got a huge box of old sweaters that I want to turn into longies. So many potential projects, so little time :)

All of this stuff will be auctioned off at the Cloth Diaper Foundation's Hyena Cart site, starting next week!