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. 
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:
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.
Here’s a fast project to save those too short tank tops with built in bras you see at yard sales for $.25. Just pull the bra part up and out of the tank top and cut along the outer binding. These are nice for night time support or layering under v-neck tops. And no sewing!
I had two tanks to cut up and I also threw this tinkerbell top into the picture. I loved the shirt but the hood drove me crazy so I loped it off.
I used the Fern & Faerie pattern again to make some medium sized diapers. My little one grew out of the smalls in 4 weeks. I guess then that smalls fit 8-12lbs. I think the smalls would have fit longer if the side flaps were larger. So I enlarged them for more waist room when making the mediums. I also skipped the top stitching. So far I don’t see it affecting functionality.
It took 22 cotton knit clothing items to make 7 diapers and 14 inserts. Notions cost $2.50.
Kids’ clothes are a wonderful source of nifty appliques, notions and specialty fabric. They’re cheap and often free to acquire. Too often items that get a bit stained or outgrown are just tossed instead of recycled. Making gift bags is a fantastic, fast way to recycle tiny garments!
Here’s one I made out of a toddler skort and two scraps from my scrap box. Just two quick rectangles serged together and around the top with a quick serged scrap ribbon.
This could be re-gifted over and over or used to store small items like jewelry, stationary, software, a game system, kids’ toys, etc. Larger sizes can be reused as shoe bags, craft and art supply organizers, and for china storage. There are so many possibilities!
Another gift bag I made from a couple of t-shirt scraps. I made a quick ribbon from my scrap box. This is a single layer bag but I think from now on I’ll be doubling up when I use tees for gift bags. The extra layer will support large/heavier gifts and prevent a lot of the stretching that happens with knits. It will also help the bag last longer in its second life.
I also did a quick(hence the messiness)reverse applique fix for a big hole in the front center of one of my son’s tees. It’s a bit sloppy but it works.
Flashback!
I’ll be posting some things I’ve made over the last few years that used to be on my old blog. That blog is lost forever now so the pics are moving here!
A few years ago I experimented with different styles of training underwear for my daughter. Most of them were a bit too small or too tight or too loose around the legs for her but the striped one was a winner. She continued to wear it even after training. These were made from old t-shirts with a patch of terry inside to catch leaks:
