How I'm making fitted cloth diapers

So why am I even bothering making cloth diapers, when there's already so many adorable ones out there? When I first started researching (and being overwhelmed by) cloth diaper types, one thing that kept coming up over and over was that most newborns aren't big enough for the one size fits all model. Most people just used disposables until their babies were fitting into the cloth brands, but then I came across DIY diaper tutorials. I figured why not make flannel fitteds that are newborn sized to use for those first couple months? Our plan is to use these flannels, as well as a stash of prefolds, with Thirsties wraps as the leak proof outer.

I read through quite a few tutorials before I found the one that made the most sense to me. Mary Ostyn at OwlHaven has an amazing method, AND she has specifications for different diaper sizes. I made a template for myself in Photoshop to make cutting the fabric easy peasy. After a few attempts and modifications, I had my system down. But I was still having trouble with the elastic. And then I stumbled on Ali's tutorial at Dream Crafter, and boom. Elastic became my friend. (Finally.)

The best thing about making cloth diapers is that they are DIAPERS. So even though I'm not the best sewer, I can rock these. Because at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter that my stitches aren't perfect; these things are going to be used to wrap a baby's booty. So much more fun to sew when perfection isn't required.

So here's my methodology (along with way too many pictures).

1) Cut out two pieces of fabric: One will be the front of the diaper, one will be the back.

2) Use leftover fabric to make a stack of ovals to be the main absorbent part of the diaper. I get 5-6 stacked per diaper.

3) I run a line through the stack to hold the pieces together.

4) Then sew it down with a zig zag stitch to the wrong side of one of the pieces. 

The part that you'll see is the right side of the fabric, but it will be the inside of the diaper. Does it matter if the stitches are a perfect oval? Nope. Not one bit.

Okay, so this next part I sometimes do, but mostly don't: adding velcro for easy attaching. I like the idea of easily fastening the diaper with velcro, but I'm mostly okay with using Snappis to hold the fabric in place on baby. After I did several velcroed diapers, I tried them on my friends' newborn and they didn't quite work so well. Granted, her baby was five weeks old, not brand new, and bit bigger than average, but I figure why do all the extra work each time for a chance that it'll fit right. If I don't do any attachments, I don't have to worry about it fitting or not. 

But. I still do it once in awhile. Just in case. :)

5) Cut a long strip of the soft side of the velcro. I put my diaper pieces together at this point and fold it up so I don't accidentally sew it to the wrong spot. (I am 7 months pregnant at this point, and I do ridiculous things like that). The long strip gets sewn to the part of the diaper that will be the right underneath baby's belly button.

Here's another secret: I sew right on the front of the velcro. I know you're supposed to sew from the back so it doesn't look hideous, but it was really hard for me to keep my stitches straight on the velcro like that. I ended up falling off the side of the velcro way too much and having to go over it a few times, which ended up looking worse. So I decided whatever, and just sew right on top now.

6) Cut four small pieces: two of the soft side of the velcro, two of the scratchy side.

Again, I set up the diaper to make sure I place the velcro in the right spot. These four tabs go on the wings that wrap around baby. The outside two are the scratchy pieces that will attach to the long tab in the front. The inside two are the soft pieces that will be used as laundry tabs, or when the diaper's not in use. The scratchy velcro side likes to stick to the flannel I've found.

7) Then I sew those suckers down.

If I decided not to do velcro, I skip steps 5-7 and go straight to sewing the pieces together.

8) I put the right sides together and pin all the way around. 

And here's where I differ from most of the blog tutorials I read. A lot of those tutorials were actually for pocket diapers, so a gap in the back was necessary. There are a couple reasons I chose not to bother with pockets, the main one being that I found it hard to sew in the elastic for the pocket. Another is that these diapers are meant for baby for when he's really little, so I'm hoping I won't need to add soakers to meet his little bladder's needs. And if I do need some soakers, I'm okay with just laying them in the diaper.

9) Sewing the pieces together: I leave an opening in the front of the diaper (the smaller side) for turning purposes. I try to leave a pretty wide seam allowance around the curves and in the back so the elastic can easily be sewn in those spots.

10) Okay, elastic, which used to be the hardest part. I need three pieces: two 4.5 inches (the sides) and one five inch (the back). Instead of cutting each one out individually, I measure out the three sections on my one long piece of elastic, using a sharpie to mark the end of each piece.

First 4.5 inches:

Second 4.5 inches:

And lastly the 5 inch piece.

I like this method better because it's much easier to pull the elastic taut as you sew when you have a good amount to pull on. When I cut out the pieces, it was harder to keep pulling the elastic the closer the needle got to the end of it.

11) I set my machine for tacking the elastic down on the end. What works for me is a stitch length of .7 and stitch width of 4. This gives a really tight, wide group of stitches that hold that end in place. 

12) I start with one of the side elastics (the 4.5 inch elastic), and carefully hold the elastic in place in the seam allowance. Then stitch!

I probably go a little overboard with tacking. I'm sure just a few stitches are required in real life, but I'm a little paranoid.

13) Next, I change the settings to sew the whole piece of elastic down. It needs to be sewn with a zig zag that isn't so tight it can't move. I use a length of 2 and a width of 1.5.

14) Stitch the elastic down while pulling it nice and taut. That part was impossible to to photograph while I was sewing, so this is the end result, where you can see the nice puckering. Since I'd already measured out the elastic, I know to stop when I hit the sharpie mark, and cut off the rest of the elastic there.

15) Then I switch back to the tacking settings on my machine and tack the heck out of the other side.

16) I do the other side's elastic, and then the back elastic last. 

18) I trim off any excess fabric around the corners and elastic if necessary, then turn the diaper inside out. I poke out all the corners with a pencil or whatever's handy so they're shaped better.

19) Top stitching. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. More often I will do it, because I like how it flattens out the wings better than leaving them as is. The only thing that's really necessary is closing up the gap in the front. Sometimes I'm a little paranoid about hitting the elastic with the top stitch. Stitching over the elastic will kill it, so I often give it a very wide berth.

20) The final step is to close it up, admire it, and then take it to show Chris how adorable it is. Because seriously. 

It's the cutest, littlest thing ever.

I have no idea how well they'll work. Really no idea. I guess we'll see in November! But I figure they won't be completely useless, even if they don't end up being as absorbent as I'd like. And if the fit's a little off, that's fine, since we'll be using the Thirsties wraps over them. 

I made some itty bitty matching liners with leftover flannel. I size them to be a little shorter than the length of the diaper, then cut out a bunch and zig zag stitch them together on the ends. They're not perfect looking, but they fit inside the diapers and are cute to boot. 

Here's my stash so far. I've got about six other flannels in waiting, so I think by the end of this I'll have about 20 fitteds saved up.

We also caved and got a few newborn sized BumGenius all-in-ones. We found a great deal on barely used ones on clothdiapertrader.com. But that's it! Other than those six, it's going to be these flannels and prefolds until he's big enough to fit in the one size regular diapers. So excited to wrap his little bum in these!

22 Weeks

Holy moly, we're just a month away from hitting the third trimester!

It's starting to get really real around here. In these last couple weeks, Baby T has really upped his squirming game. I can feel him most at night right when I lay down in bed. Nothing painful yet, just the weird feeling of a teeny baby doing somersaults underneath my skin.

Even more exciting, we just started seeing him move as well. When I was 16 weeks, I saw a Youtube video of another 16 week-er who had filmed her baby's movement. So for about a week I poked my stomach and watched intently right before bed, but nothing ever happened. I'd kind of given up looking. Then, while I was taking a bath the other day, I felt him start tumbling and happened to glance down and boom! There was that little kick pushing underneath the skin. And then another right after. I saw him move five times in total in about ten minutes. Makes me wonder how long I could've seen it had I been watching for it in the last few weeks.

Chris saw it happen, though faintly, later that night when we were shining a light on him trying to get him to move. Baby T does things on his own terms, though, and doesn't like to perform when asked. I did get lucky and caught the movement on video the next morning when I woke up to him doing laps.

In the meantime, we're getting lots of stuff done around the house this summer. It's so nice being off from work, and with Chris working at home we can schedule any projects or errands we need to pretty easily. Our goal has been to do a full house purge before officially starting the nursery. Months ago we made a list of furniture we needed to get rid of (bedroom chair, TV stand and old school TV that used to be in our room, bookcase in our office), things we needed to downsize (kitchen table and our giant office desk), and things we needed to do (move wifi from office/soon-to-be-nursery to living room, clean out attic and garage, set up Chris' new office in the dining room, and my new "office" in the bedroom). And crazily enough, we are almost at the end of our list. We cleaned out the attic last week, and filled about six boxes of stuff to get rid of; yesterday we did the garage and emptied out most of our cabinet drawers down there. Note to anyone needing to clean out their house of stuff they've been hanging on to "just in case": just wait till you're six months pregnant. It'll turn you ruthless with what really needs to stay and what can easily go. And it feels so good to get rid of unnecessary things.

I still need to go through some stuff in the office, and my goal is to use up a lot of my scrapbooking stuff so I have little to store. That's actually my plan for today, while Chris goes on a man date with Ryan. :)

Cloth Diapers

We've decided to go the cloth diaper route, for a couple of reasons.

1) They're way too cute.

2) Hello, money saver?

3) We're all about the good ol' environment.

When I started researching cloth diapers, I was a bit overwhelmed. I couldn't figure out how they worked. Then I realized there were different kinds with different functions: all-in-ones, pockets, fitteds, blah blah blah. So I read blogs, watched youtube videos, and read Amazon reviews, and I think I now, finally, have a handle on this whole thing.

One of the first things I learned was that most cloth diapers come in a "one size fits all," which is awesome for saving money in the long run. But apparently most of these diapers don't fit the newish newborns all that well, so it's very recommended to have specific newborn diapers on hand for the first couple months.

We're not really into the idea of buying a whole diaper system for just a two month stint, so we've chosen to mostly go the prefolds with covers route in the beginning (Thirsties Duo Wraps to be specific). Then I learned about fitteds that can be used inside the covers. And then I learned you could make fitteds out of adorable flannel.

I'm a little addicted. But seriously, how cute is that flannel?!

Right before school ended, I scored with a huge fabric sale at Joanns. Flannel was 70% off, and I paid around $2.30 a yard for it. Best. Sale. Ever. I got 5 yards at that sale and I'm kicking myself for not getting more at the time. I've managed to get about three diapers per yard, plus a couple of liners just because there were leftovers.

The plan is to use these along with a stack of prefolds for the first couple of months while baby is still a teeny tiny little thing and not yet fitting in the regular diapers. Most of them have no attachments, since my plan was to just use Snappis to hold them in place, but I discovered some velcro in my stash so I did some experimenting with the last couple. Not sure if I love it or not, mostly because I can't test out if I'm placing the velcro right or not. For all I know I'll have to cinch the diaper much tighter than the velcro will allow to get a good fit. Guess we won't know until November!

Around here

Eating Cookie Crisp cereal. Every single day. I have never been a huge cereal person, and now I am making trips to the store to load up on three boxes of Cookie Crisp each week.

Visiting the doctor! Everything's looking good so far!

Attending a Knot wedding function at a new venue in Liberty Station. 

His and her drinks at the Knot party. It was not the same without the vodka.

Rearranging the house to make room for baby. We're trying to get as much done as possible in the early weeks of summer so we can really settle it by the end of it when I go back to work. The biggest step is moving the office from its current room (which will be the nursery) to the dining room. Chris found a desk he loved and we set it up this weekend. Now we're ready to slowly migrate all the tech and supplies into the space.

Receiving the cutest gifts! This package of adorableness came from Chris' cousin Emily, and I can't wait to get everything out of the nursery closet so I can start hanging things up!

Cuddling the cats while working on the laptop. Jack desperately wants to sit on my stomach, but he weighs like 18 pounds, so no. He finally gave up that quest and just rested a paw on it.

Not pictured:

Sewing up a storm! Since Chris is taking over the dining room, we had to move the dining table into the middle of the living room until it gets sold. Enter my new sewing table! About a month ago I bought a ton of flannel at Joanns while it was on sale for $2.30 a yard (score!) and I've been busy perfecting my cloth diaper making skills. And by perfecting, I do mean that they will be perfect for our baby to pee on. ;)

Catching Up

One of my favorite things about summer break? Having time to sit down and work on this year's Project Life album.

I've got lots and lots of journaling to catch up on over the last few months. I'm pretty sad that the first half of this pregnancy has passed with very little being written down. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a better job of jotting down all these thoughts this summer.

With the new Project Life app, it's very easy to get bits and pieces of bunches of kits, but I seem to always return to the Midnight/Seafoam kits in the end. They just work for me. I made some new cards to showcase what's going on "at the moment." Everyone seems to have "currently" cards (myself included), and I wanted to try something different. I made the word art using the Adobe Draw app for ipad. Adobe has a nice new feature where you can send designs from the app straight into Photoshop; I saved it as a PNG for future use and made up the 4x6 card for these layouts.

As you can see, the baby is growing nice and big! I'm starting to really feel it when I'm trying to fall asleep, trying to sit on the floor, trying to sit cross legged, and pretty much trying to make any sort of movement at all these days. We hit 20 weeks on Wednesday, and I cannot even imagine what 40 weeks will feel like!

Wrapping up the school year

Sigh. I loved my 8th graders this year. Like, really, really loved them. I would keep them all again for next year. In fact, I wish they would never grow up and I could always teach them things.

They seriously are a rad, fun bunch.

And as much as I'm looking forward to summer, I am so seriously sad to see them go. Luckily, there's a good chunk of them this year going on to our high school, so I'll see them occasionally. But many are going on to other schools in the area, and it's likely I'll never see about a third of them again. So sad with this group.

The Monday of graduation week is always the worst. It's at the ceremony practice that I always start tearing up, looking around at all of them, and just wishing I could keep them in my class forever.




On Tuesday, we all go to Knott's Berry Farm. This year I got a group full of boys! Turns out, though, that the boys are way less drama than the girl groups. ;) And I got a pretty great group of friends and sweeties all around. They were so good to me all day, making sure I had a chair when we sat down for snacks and lunch, taking turns carrying things for me. Love those kids so much!




They were in line for the river rafting ride for a long time, and I waited in the shade of one of the nearby bridges to get some shots of the group coming down. They are such goofballs; I loved catching all their giddy fun.




And then Wednesday was graduation.



And, yes, I totally cried.



Have I mentioned how much I'll miss these kids?! They have truly made this an amazing year.

Thursday was "clean yo' room day."



I had to work especially hard this year, because I'm moving out of my amazing brand new (of two years) classroom! :(  We got our assignments for next year, and I'm part of a new program to help struggling students catch up. Don't know what that entails exactly; we're (myself and another teacher) waiting to hear the details. But man oh man was it hard packing up my room. I had moved a lot of stuff in there and had all my decoration just right. Now they're packed away in a bunch of bins in the back room storage area of the special ed classrooms.

Friday was staff luncheon.



We ate and chatted, awards were given out, pictures were taken, and then our principal sent us off for the summer. The picture above isn't actually at the end of year luncheon. It's from our end of year teacher-appreciation lunch a couple weeks before. This is the math team, 6th-12th grade. We're pretty much the best team. ;)


And that's it! Another school year done. This one went by so fast, but it was fun and jam-packed and I know the kids have tons of great memories from math class. I wish I was better at jotting down all the fun antics as they happen, so I'll always remember those goofballs and their funny stories. That's definitely something I want to work on next year.

Good-bye, school year of 2014-2015!

13 Weeks!

The bump is beginning!