That belly! Those little legs!
That little cloth-diapered bum!
I can't help it. She's just so darn cute.
Oh, right. I'm supposed to be talking about diapers? This, possibly the last, post is one of an informal series on cloth diapering I've been doing for the past, oh, while. The last one I did was on where to buy cloth diapers but if you're feeling extra crafty and/or thrifty and/or tree-huggery, you can make your own! There are a ton of resources for making your own cloth diapers and I'm just going to to briefly go over my own experience.
First of all, I am no seasoned seamstress. But even I found sewing diapers to be not all that hard! With a small amount of fabric and a bit of elastic, you too can have cute, custom made diapers for your wee one. I used the free Rita's Rump Pocket pattern with no real modifications. It's a fairly simple pocket diaper with elasticized legs and no closures, unless you add them. If you use the right material, they can be closed with a snappi, or you can just use pins. The first few I did in cotton flannel, as seen above.
Then I made a big stack of the same pattern using flannel for the inner and fleece for the outer. A nice cotton flannel inner keeps baby's bum soft and absorbs all the...what you need it to absorb. The fleece outer supposedly is water "resistant" but I always find that it gets pretty wet. No matter - you'd have a cover over it anyway, generally speaking! For the absorbent liner, I sewed a three-layer rectangle of hemp fleece, sized to fit in the pocket.
Above you can see the diaper with the liner outside of it. Easy peasy! The main (well, only) modification I made was to add velcro closures. I originally left them off and intended to just use pins. How hard could it be, right? Well, I don't know if we got stuck with some very dull pins or if I'm just too afraid of poking that cute little babe, but the pins never really worked for us. Thus, well after the fact, I added velcro on the two large tabs. If I had it to do over again, I'd add velcro to the main body of the diaper so the tabs could stick to it, but this would have to be done before the diaper is all sewn up, otherwise you'd be sewing shut part of the pocket that holds the liner. Ask me how I know. *ahem*
They are a "one size" diaper so they should fit your baby for a while. That said, they certainly didn't work for our little string bean until she was no longer a teeny infant. Now, though, they are perfectly functional and I suspect that they will continue to be for a good long while.
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