Time to stop whining and do something!
I took an old cotton knit dress and starting hacking away at it.
Unfortunately , after working for 30 minutes, my 20 month old discovered what I was doing and further hindered any progress. Hopefully I’ll get to the sewing this evening when the hubby is here to keep the toddler occupied.
Here’s what’s done so far. 
I made this top for my one year old from a pattern and tutorial posted at Prudent Baby. Despite following all the sizing to print directions, my top came out very tight for a 12-18 month sizing. So she only wore it once to a party. At least it was made from a $.10 yard sale pillowcase. And it was super fast and easy to make!
Just some shots of the finished diapers for my sister’s baby.
I kinda forgot to photograph some of the large ones but they were just plain blues and browns. I still owe her the covers and I’ll be working on those today. 
You are so sick of posts about diapers right? I have more interesting projects coming up. Right now I’m dealing with a need issue as my toddler has outgrown all her medium diapers and has only 12 large diapers. That’s too few for my liking. So I again copied Motherease and made a paper pattern of the One-Size style diaper.
I had a $2 cut of stretch terry from the thrift store that yielded 3 diapers and overnight soakers . I used a pink t-shirt for the binding and they turned out not too horrible. 
Just wanna say again how much I prefer snaps over velcro. When babies are small, the velcro is fine. As they get to be toddlers they like to undo the velcro just for fun. It drives me crazy. But these will be overnight diapers so we shouldn’t have that issue since she’ll be sleeping in them.
How’s that for a title? I was going to call this “The super big project I’ve been working on” but it just wasn’t as catchy.
My sister is having her first baby and informed me that she wanted to use cloth diapers. Yay! So I promised to make them for her as the baby’s gift.
Well, I decided to make 18 smalls(7-11lbs), 18 mediums(10-22lbs), 4 covers, and 36 cloth wipes. Each diaper required 3 cotton t-shirts. I needed 9 t-shirts for the wipes. So that’s over 100 tees needed. Luckily I know a church thrift that sells them for $.10-15 each. It’s a significant investment of time finding the tees, since there are just piles of clothes to go through, but I enjoy treasure hunting.
So the last few weeks I’ve cutting all the pieces needed for this project. Each diaper has 4 pieces. The soakers for each diaper need 8 pieces. Wipes are 2 pieces each. All in all I needed about 500 pieces cut. They’re almost all cut out now(just a dozen inserts left) and I’ve have started sewing.
I need to finish by Thanksgiving.
Work in progress:
For “no frills” this cover took forever to make. But that’s because I tried to put binding on it twice to pretty it up and I failed miserably each time. The first binding was a recycled lycra suit and the second was a recycled nylon slip. Both would have worked well in theory since they are non-wicking fabrics but my binding skills are seriously horrible. So I spent far too long picking out the threads of my sad, sad attempts to make the cover better looking.
I should *gasp* buy a tool for applying bindings. Someday I’ll wise up. 
Anyway, I left the edges raw. It doesn’t really matter with PUL, except for looks. I used a Motherease Airflow cover I already had to make the pattern and I used velcro since I don’t have a plastic snap setter. I do have metal snaps and a setter but I think those would rust? Anyway, I love the Airflow design because the side overlap prevents leakage but still allows air to circulate which prevents rashes. I’m on my third baby diapered with this style cover and it works!
As much as I love their products, I’d rather not pay $15 each for new covers. Homemade covers with my half-price PUL are only $2 each.
After finishing this cover it dawned on me that I should just reinforce the 4, old diaper covers I have instead of making new. Motherease snaps will apparently never die since the covers I have are now 10 years old and the snaps are still working well. The waterproof coating is worn out though and the covers are leaking. Snaps are harder for toddlers to undo than velcro.
So that’s my next project, reinforcement of the covers I have.
I only had a couple of day’s warning to put together a nice gift for an expectant mom. I love baby showers and I love making gifts for babies so I felt no pressure at all making something on short notice. I spent a couple of days assessing what materials I had on hand and the time I would have to work(seems like there’s less and less of that these days). I had such a therapeutic morning assembling this gift! With a good plan and a supportive hubby I was able to get this gift done with plenty of time to spare.
The first gift made was a tie dyed onesie. It’s supposed to be black with accordion folds but I forgot that black often comes out purplish. It’s been a long time since I’ve dyed anything! It’s a gift for a boy so I thought I’d better make it look more boyish. I quickly downloaded some clip-art and printed it on iron-on transfer paper. Adorable and gender neutral! It’s also much darker in person.
Next up was a crinkle tag toy. This one was insanely easy to whip up! I saw it somewhere on my internet search for frugal baby gifts but I can’t recall where. But basically it’s 6 bits of folded ribbon, 2 6X6 inch squares of flannel and a layer of plastic in between. It took about 8 minutes to make it and I had to fight my 11 month old to keep it for a gift. She was really loving it!
Last was the bucket to present the gift in. I had posted a tutorial for this project on my old blog but that blog is, sadly, no more. 
It’s pretty simple though. You cut 4 exterior and interior pieces 6.5X8.5 inches and 1 interior and exterior pieces 8.5X8.5 inches. Assemble the exterior box by sewing together the 4 exterior side pieces face-to-face on the short sides to form a bottomless box(like a box kite). Then attach the 8.5 inch square to the botom face-to-face.
Repeat steps with interior pieces.
Place right side out exterior box on flat surface and insert right-side-out interior box.
Starting an inch down from the top edge, sew in-the-ditch on all four corners.
Cut a square of cardboard to fit the bottom of your box and slip it in down one of the sides. Then cut 4 cardboard pieces to fit the sides(1/2 inch shorter than the top edge of your fabric).
When your cardboard pieces are all in you can fold in the outer and inner edges, pin and sew shut.
I’ll make a tutorial again one of these days. I wasn’t thinking about it this morning or I would have taken pictures of my work in progress. Duh!
Anyway, I added handles and a little pocket on the front to slip an index card into. That way the bucket is reusable as a nursery organizer.
I added a Baby Gap hat I picked up on clearance, tissue paper and a recycled card festooned with a recycled ribbon.
All in all this gift cost about $5 and 2.5 hours of crafting.
Well I was hit with the creative bug this week so I finally pulled out the PUL(har-har!) I bought months ago and decided to make a denim all-in-one diaper. I used my regular diaper pattern that you’ve seen in other posts. I did have to change how I added the velcro and elastic to keep any threads from wicking moisture through the layers but it wasn’t too hard to make those modifications.
I used the PUL for an interior fabric layer so the outer would be denim. An old pair of lightweight jeans and a t-shirt made this project very frugal.
Next time I’ll be sure to cut the outer pieces a tad larger than the interior pieces so that it rolls ever so slightly to the inside. It still turned out really cute for about $2 worth of materials.
My daughter had grown out of the small Kiddopotomus SwaddleMe wrap so I decided to make her a larger one. I purchased a fleece throw blanket from Goodwill for $1.50 and drafted a pattern from the small wrap. I then enlarged my pattern by an inch all around.
Then I cut the pieces from the fleece blanket, darted, added the grippy patches(found that scraps from a brown sweater seemed to work best), made and basted on the hook velcro tabs, bound the top edges and then attached the two main pieces together. I’m bummed that I didn’t have anything blue that would grip the hook tape as well as this sweater. It looks a little ghetto. But it does work!
And here it is next to the small one I copied.
I made these elastic backed boots for a friend. Hopefully they stay on better that the prototype pair I made for my baby. I didn’t put elastic in those and she kicks them right off.
Anyway, I made these out of an old leather dress and sweater. I made a pattern by examining footie pj’s and copying the contoured pieces as best as I could.
