Blue to match her eyes

Daddy Diapering Giveaway Event

Check out Mama Dweeb for a cloth diaper giveaway event starting February first. Looks like it's gonna be pretty sweet!!! The best part is that her husband will be doing all the reviewing! Very interesting.

Cloth Diaper Fabrics

So, I'm almost done with my first cloth diaper (made almost entirely of fabrics found around the house) and I'm discovering that it's really not that hard to make.  Really!! The most difficult thing about it is limiting myself to things I already have.  So I have one type of snap to close the diaper and another type of snap to adjust the rise (Yes, it's a one-size diaper).  I'm glad that I just happen to have snaps because when I thought I didn't have any I was going to use the buttons from the raincoat I cut up!  I wouldn't mind the idea of buttons except the fact that a baby can tear them off and swallow them scares me a little.  Yes, I'm paranoid.  So, I would finishing up with my sewing right now (6am) but we have a guest over and I don't want to wake him with my sewing machine. But this time of the day is normally a great time for projects like that because my little angel is still sleeping.  So instead I am searching online for a great place to buy fabrics.  I don't know if I'll find a place with the fabrics I want AND free shipping (I rarely, if ever, pay for shipping when buying my diapers thanks to Diaperpin.com!), but since I'm not ready to buy the stuff yet anyway, that question can wait.  So, in case I forget, here are the diaperwebsites I found:

www.diapercuts.com --this place has almost everything I'm interested in "in stock" but the design of the website is somewhat messy and difficult to navegate.  However, she has the best prices of the three sites I've looked at so I can forgive a messy site!

www.celticclothswholesale.com  --looks like a great site but almost NOTHING is in stock!!!  I wrote to them on the contact page and asked them to please restock.  No one's going to buy from them with ALL their most popular fabrics sold out.

verybaby.com--also a cute site but nothing I want is in stock, though they have more in stock than celtic cloths.

diaperkits.com--have precut, all inclusive kits for you to make your own diapers

I've decided that I'm going to buy some PUL (obviously) and as an inner, absorbent layer I want Hemp Fleece.

Other cloth diaper fabrics are easier to find at regular fabric stores or in clothing designated for Good Will--such as microfleece (to wick away moisture) and even microsuede (I just happen to have some in my personal fabric stash but it's an ugly, tan color because it's left over from a Renaissance Faire male peasant costume).  If you want a microfiber insert, you can just go to the automotive section of Walmart or Target and buy washcloths there.  They're made of microfiber.  For my recycled cloth diaper I am using a microfiber washcloth someone gave me as a wedding present for "washing dishes" but I never liked it for that purpose.  So, theoretically I don't even need to get the hemp fleece because other absorbent layers are available to me, but I will anyway.  I just want to try it and premade diapers made with the stuff are so expensive.  Any hemp diapers are really expensive so if I want some, I gotta make them myself.

I wish I'd had the ambition to try this before I'd filled my stash with other diapers.  I mean, you know that I'm in LOVE with all my diapers, but I could have saved even more money if I'd made them myself.  I'm fully capable and always have been... but newborn care and post partum issues made the idea of sewing repulsive to me.  Oh well!

A Cloth Diaper Shop That's Supporting a Good Cause

Enjoy Cloth Diaper is an online cloth diaper retailer that donates 5% of it's proceeds to support World Vision.  World Vision is a Christian organization that works to help the poor.  While on a missions trip to NYC the past two summers, my team worked in a World Vision warehouse.  They get places to donate excess products to them and they, in turn, donate these products to churches, schools, and other organizations who have the means to get these things into the hands of those who need them.  Their NYC warehouse is AMAZING! It's incredible the amount of stuff people donate to them.  We spent our time there mixing paints that had been donated--sorting through them to find which ones were keepers and which were too old.  Last summer I couldn't help with that because I was pregnant so I worked in one of their offices for the day.  It was fun stuff.  Seriously!  In any case, check out Enjoy Cloth Diapers because I'd love to see more support given to this GREAT organization!!!

Doh!

So my SLR's battery died yesterday after I uploaded the most recent pictures of my cute daughter and I went to charge it.... and realized that I left it at my relative's house (7 hours away from me) during Christmas. Arrggh!!! Now I just need to track it down and make sure that's where it is. I really don't feel like buying a new charger right now but with huge baby steps being made in my little girl's life there just might not be any other option.

Haute Pocket

In one of her new diapers--an aqua colored Haute Pocket (on sale at Nickisdiapers.com and they offer free shipping on pocket diapers!)

Make Your Own Cloth Baby Wipes

So, I recently read a blog post giving instructions on how to make your own baby wipes. It seemed easy enough to do, even for someone like me who does not have a serger. So I tried it. Basically, you get two layers of flannel, cut them, put them together soft side out, and sew them with a zig zag stitch, leaving the edges ragged.

I did it. I went downstairs to my fabric stash and took ALL the flannel scraps I could find and made about 20 baby wipes. Then I went to Walmart, bought more flannel (to make more for me and some for a friend who recently started cloth diapering) and some spray bottles for $.97 each and I ordered some Honey Chunks Wipe Solution and now I have lots of little, great-smelling cubes to dissolve in my spray bottle and I spray it on my wipes before using them. (Some people prefer to store the wipes in the solution, but I store them dry)

After about a month using these homemade and super cheap wipes, I'm in love!!!

Here are a few pros and cons of these wipes

Pro-

They're very thick so that when one side is sprayed, the other side often says dry so you can wipe your baby's bottom with one side and dry it with the other before closing it in a diaper.

Con-

Because they're so thick and may not get wet all the way through when sprayed, they sometimes slip out of your hands while in use.

Con-

Because the ends are unfinished they fray for awhile in the wash. For awhile there I was picking bits of flannel thread from my microfiber inserts and hook and loop closures. But the fraying stops after a couple of washes.

This is what the wipes look like after the first wash. You'll see in subsequent pictures that it gets better.

Pro-

Leaving the edges unfinished means you're not spending lots of time turning your wipes inside out to sew and then right side out to hide the seams. I thought the fraying was worth the time saved on sewing them.

Pro-

the wipes are super absorbent and super soft. At first the water sort of runs off them and leaves the baby's bottom very wet, but after a few washes, the water stays inside the wipe and my daughter's bottom is not super wet when I'm done wiping her.

Pro-

IT SAVES TONS OF MONEY!!! No more spending $6 or more on wipes every week or so. No buying expensive wipes online for me! Overall, I'm very pleased with this baby wipe. In the future I'd love to try making baby wipes with different fabrics but for now I'm contented with my flannel :-)

The green wipe is 7" squared before being washed. The monkey wipe shrunk a little in the wash but you can see after prolonged use, it's no longer shedding little pieces of flannel.

Comparing an unwashed green wipe with a washed blue one. I bought my flannel at Walmart for $2.97/yard and I notice that the printed flannel seems to fray less and it's more thick and luxurious than the solid colors for the same price. A shame since I love solid colors. Oh well!

*A note to my readers--when making such an endeavor as this (switching disposable wipes for cloth ones) Please inform your husbands BEFORE going to bed that night as they will be quite delirious when it's time to change the baby and will be quite confused upon seeing the box of Huggies replaced by a basket full of flannel scraps and a spray bottle and will wake you up asking for a tutorial.