Day 15: A Photo a Day 365

Naptime productivity, start to finish.

Fitted Diapers, with snaps

Here I go, upcycling again.

My snappi's no longer fit James well, they take quite a bit of stretching. I suppose with 17 months of daily use, 5-10 diapers a day they were well worth the money. Time to tuck them away for future babies.

In the meantime though, I needed to find a better, easier way to diaper James. With Mr. Sir gone off to training, cloth diapering has been put on the backburner a bit. Diapering, washing, drying and dealing with rash and ammonia isn't what I really want to deal with. Actually, I still WANT to deal with it, for the environment and the savings. It is just time consuming.

So, for my sanity I am finding other ways. This latest grand idea is to take the thinning prefolds, add a center absorbant strip that isn't sewn to the diaper, that way it has more surface area to help dry it. I bought a plastic snap pliers with some snaps to play with. I also use elastic on the waist, and legs to keep the messes in and for a slimmer fit. So far I have maybe 6 of these fitted diapers. Enough for one full day at home before I wash, dry, and repeat.

I am also upcycling old flannel cloth that I have lying around for the inserts, the flannel is from some shirts, sheets, and old projects. The inserts are also from some really thin diapers that only work as stuffers. I am trying to use up some odd thread colors that I have too, that is why the thread does not math.

Being human, I will admit that I do cheat. We use a disposable overnight because he sleeps better when he doesn't wake up with the urine next to his skin. Which makes momma sleep better, which in turn makes everyone happier. I also use a disposable in the mornings when he is sure to poop. Oh, the ease.

I have been sewing one at a time for a couple of months now. I intend to make a bunch more because I like them that much.

Oh, and the snaps. Amazing. He can pull them off but not as easy as velcro. They are easy to install too. I can add more snaps to them to create girth as he grows into the diaper. I only spaced out the snaps for girth on a few of the diapers because I am still playing around with the sizing.

But here you go, enjoy!

Yes, that is Garfield you see peeking at you from the open one.

Live and Love

Red and Grey Stripey Butt

I haven't been very good at posting lately. With a new part time job at an assisted living center, I have been adjusting to my new schedule. I love my new job. Of course I have lots of spare time though, and what do I do in my spare time?

Watch the Olympics of course! Have you seen those crazy snowboarders! And of course I need to hide away in my sewing room once in a while.

The latest project coming out of the sewing room is a new diaper cover. My mother in law had an old shirt where the colors were bleeding into one another but the fabric was still wonderful. My first thought was "diaper fabric!".

A snip here and a stitch there and James has a new diaper cover. Which is a good thing because his cheap covers that I originally bought him are wearing out and leaking. Four out of five have been sent to my scrap pile. So one diaper at a time  to rejuvenate his stash.

Just a quick little update for you. For now just Live and Love

Viking Fluff

James' big gift this christmas was a diaper. 

Yes, a diaper.

Well, technically its a diaper cover.
Close enough.

A super - crazy- cool diaper cover, of course!























James sure likes it, and its big enough for him to wear for a while.

Mr. Sir loved the diaper too. It is too bad that the Viking's season is over. The bright side is that we live in Minnesota where Viking's apparel is always in style.


My only issue is that I should have softened up the fabric first. I know it will soften with use but it is a little stiff to start.

Go Vikings!

I used the basic pattern from WitteyBums, Flip-Style and Elemental-Style Diaper and switched it up to suit my diaper.

Live and Love

Plaid Diaperness

My sisters mother-in-law gave me an old shirt to upcycle. I was originally going to make diaper soakers with it. But I am a sucker for plaid, and what is cuter than a little plaid tushy. So here is a plaid diaper cover that I made for James.

I played around with diapers, but so far I still like just using prefolds with covers.

Here's the cute tushy.

.

The socks are hand dyed by Wendy Richardson owner of Quilt Tapestry Studio. Aren't they adorable?

Live and Love

Stuffin' Stuffers.

I have some microfiber inserts and wasn't using them. They should not be used directly on baby's skin because it can dry them out and cause diaper rash. I bought the microfiber inserts at first to stuff pocket diapers, but I have a strong dislike of my kawaii pockets. (I actually just sold my pockets! Yay! More money to buy new diapers that I prefer better.) So I covered the microfiber inserts in flannel to use them inside a PUL by themselves. The microfiber inserts also act as sponges. Meaning they leak under pressure, pressure like baby bums. Therefore the flannel outside the microfiber should help prevent overflows by soaking up the extra leakage.

This is just a microfiber insert covered with flannel.

I have used it a few times, works great for pee and makes quite a mess with poop unless used with a prefold to catch the poo. 

It was a great way to use the microfiber inserts and make do with what I have. They weren't being used before, and now they are!

 

Live and Love!

Folders not Stuffers.

I saw this diaper in some of my diaper tutorial perusing. It made me real intrigued. Some diapers take a long time to dry in the dryer. This diaper opens up and so it will take much less time to dry. I have not tried using it yet but I am excited to try it out. It also means that I don't have to go searching for stuffers, it is all one piece. More ease for momma? Yes, please!

I do need to resize it though, the medium is a bit big for James.

I used this pattern from Wittey Bums
http://prefold2fitted.blogspot.com/2013/03/sized-flat-wrap-fitted-diapers.html

Like the last one, I need to play with it some more. Snaps, elastic, so on and so forth. Make it fit and make it work.

Live and Love!

Adding Fluff to the Fluff-Butt

James is cloth diapered. He has been for approximately 7 months now. Do you want to know what that means? That means his prefolds have been washed every other day for 7 months. Which also means that his prefolds are thinning out and falling apart. No longer can we just stick a prefold on him. We need to stuff them too or they end up sopping, soakey, wet. I have been toying with the idea of sewing him fun cloth diapers for ages now. So I started by taking the most beat up prefolds and turning them into some fitteds. I am still playing around with fit and soak. But this is what I am working with.

I figure that I can practice with his beat up prefolds. Once I get the fit and soak right I will make some from scratch.

I used WitteyBums pattern and idea for the prefitteds from here.
http://prefold2fitted.blogspot.com/2011/08/basic-serged-prefitteds.html

I need to toy with snaps too. At the moment I am using a snappi to keep it shut when not in a cover, while in a cover I don't bother clasping it. I also need to toy with the elastic and stretch it more. These whole things are a big game of trial and error.

Live and Love!

Cloth Diaper Stash

It includes 12 pocket diapers, 36 microfiber inserts, 6 generic PUL 8-20 lb covers, 3 thirsties 6-18 lb covers, 3 econobum size 2 covers, 3 acrylic knit covers, 24 prefold inserts, 44 homeade flannel wipes, and 12 homeade nursing pads.

Knitting Dipes

You have probably been curious as to what I have been doing with all of my pregnant spare time lately. Do you wanna know??

I have been practicing my knitting.

Yup, knitting. Sitting watching entire seasons of TV show's and movies (the latest has been all 7 seasons of Monk) with the click clack of needles.

I have been knitting diaper 'soakers'. Technically soakers are made out of wool. They work as cloth diaper covers instead of PUL or vinyl pants. Lanolized wool has a self cleaning property meaning that you only have to handwash them about once a month unless they are poopy. They also breathe better for those babies that are prone to diaper rash. Not to mention they are completely adorable!

I knit my first three soakers out of acrylic because I wanted to practice and get the patterns down before I splurged on wool. The acrylic soakers won't last as long because I will end up washing them more, about as much as the PUL covers. The nice thing about acrylic soakers is that they don't need hand washing.

For the first yellow one I used the Super Soaker pattern found here http://www.spudandchloe.com/patterns/super-soakers/

Then for the purple and yellow ones I used the Plain Wrap pattern found here http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/whw-plain-wrap

Super Soaker

Purple Plain Wrap

Yellow Plain Wrap

Open Yellow Plain Wrap

I just bought some plain Peruvian Highland Wool and dyed it with Kool-Aid using this crockpot method (http://www.leethal.net/zine/?p=764). I can't wait to knit it into something. Right now I am either considering a kicking bag (only if I have enough yarn) or another diaper cover. Can't decide but I will sure post it when done. Now I need to go decide which one to start!

Forgive the sloppy wound ball of yarn, it is my first time winding a ball.

Live and Love

Cloth Baby Wipes

Mr. Sir and I decided to cloth diaper the wee one when it comes along. (less than 6 weeks now!) and it makes sense to use cloth wipes along with the cloth diapers. We will be doing the laundry anyways, so why not add a little more to the load.

I had an old stained white sheet laying around that had really soft, comfortable flannel. I cut the pieces into 14 x 7 pieces and then folded them in half.

 Then I traced around the corners to make it easier to serge. That way they were all the same. After that, it was time to serge, serge, serge.

 I serged around the corners (ignore the stray thread that I forgot to nab before I took the picture). The edges I didn't tidy as much as I could have, I figured they will be wiping poo, they don't need to be pretty.

I got about 44-7x7 cloth wipes out of the sheet and 5-3x7 wipes out of the extra fabric. I know that we will need way more than that, but it will make a good supplement to the disposable wipes that we will use also.

I plan on mixing a water/coconut oil/ tea tree oil solution and keeping the wipes in a wipes warmer to make it easy to use.

Live and Love!