homemade fitted diapers
I’m still using cloth diapers on Spice, but only at home and during the day. I was getting frustrated with lugging a small suitcase with me when we would go out and felt she slept more soundly at night in disposables. (Though lately, she can nap for hours in a cloth diaper, so I might go back to using them at night, too.)
The recent challenge is that she’s starting to outgrow her current cloth prefolds. I usually do a bikini twist or newspaper fold and secure it with a Thirsties wrap-style cover. I’ve started knitting my own covers, though, and I’d need to snappi the prefold in place.. but Spice is a little too big to snappi them on anymore. I went online to look up the next size prefold and got a little distracted by the pretty fitted diapers. I think I could appreciate them more now, considering all the runny breastmilk poop. The downside is that they’re so expensive at about $13/each, compared to prefolds at $1-2/each. Thankfully, they’re fun and easy to make and are an excellent way to use up the tons of cheap flannel receiving blankets we had lying around.
DiaperJungle has an excellent page of free and $$ diaper and cover patterns, including Ottobre’s PDF pattern. I mainly followed Dianna’s How to Sew a Fitted Cloth diaper post, which was perfect since my sewing skills generally suck. :-)
I used old flannel receiving blankets for the outside. Most of ours were Target Dwell Studio ones, which make for cute modern-ish diapers. I used old flannel pillowcases and sheets for the against-the-skin fabric, and old Ikea cotton ones for the inside fabric that you stitch the soaker pad onto. For soaker pads, I used these Gerber prefolds I had picked up at Target before I knew any better. They were lousy as diapers for so many reasons. I used them as burp cloths at first and after the fishy breastmilk incident, I promptly forgot about them in a drawer. I trifolded them and cut them to fit, then stitched the trifold lengthwise to the right width. Oh, and SewShoppe sells diapering Aplix.
The end result was pretty neat – simple aplix-closing fitted diapers. I can leave off the wrap for more breathability, use a wool wrap for a little wetness protection, or use a Thirsties for completely dry. They’re on the generous side, so I imagine they’ll last a few months. And considering the first few have used up fabric around the house, they’re practically free.
