Off the Clock

UPDATE:  My daughter has been using these diapers on my granddaughter for a year now and it is time for an update.  These diapers are not sufficient on their own, even when granddaughter was very small.  The pads can't soak up fast enough and leaks abound.  So instead daughter bought flour sack toweling to use as diapers.  Yes, they need to be folded, but she felt they worked really well and were easily adjustable as granddaughter grows.  She decided against having me make them out of flannel because she didn't want to use diaper pins and the plastic clasp hooky thing she uses doesn't grab the flannel as well because the flannel is too tightly woven.  She does use these shells along with the flour sack diapers, and they have worked out really well for her.  As far as the inserts go she uses them to supplement the flour sack diapers for overnight. A diaper with one main soaker snapped in at the top. The bottom snap is to add a booster. ...

Now that I've made the prototype diaper and got my daughter's approval (she loves it), I can now go ahead and make a stash of these for her.  Once I was partway through the first batch I thought I should make a tutorial post so that if I don't get to them all right away I will remember how I made them lol.  I'm not including the actual pattern because there are already lots of free patterns out there - Google is your friend.  The one shown here was done with a commercial single size pattern that I converted to a one size pattern, but for the next batch I am going to try this pattern  from this site  (which has a ton of great resources and tutorials).  The reason for this is that I have read complaints that many of the commercial diapers aren't quite long enough for older babies/toddlers and the linked pattern is a little longer than what I am currently using.  I bought a meter of PUL in each of three colours.  By staggering the pattern back and f...

So it's been since April that I've posted.  I guess it's true what they say about retirement being so busy! lol  I have worked on a number of projects from the garden to the garage to the sewing room that I really should have posted about.  Maybe I will do a catch up post one day. In the mean time, today has been spent in the sewing room working on cloth diapers for my daughter's first child due early in the new year.  She was given some hand-me-downs from a family member and they are a whole lot more complex than what I made when she was a baby.  I spent the first part of the afternoon replacing worn out elastic and velcro on the hand-me-downs which was a good opportunity to see how commercial cloth diapers are put together.  Then I spent a crazy amount of time making my first prototype - the million dollar diaper based on how long it took me to put this together! lol  The pattern I had bought was for a pocket diaper but it turns out she prefers the...