Is it Prefold or fitted???

One of my friends and I both sew cloth diapers.  She does them just for her son, and I do them, as you know, for friends, family, and My Etsy Shop. 

In any case, we've often given each other diapers--sometimes store bought, sometimes sewn.  It's sort of fun to obsess about cloth diapers with her occasionally, share our new CD discoveries, and show off the adorable little things we've been making lately.

A couple of months ago, she found a pattern online for this oddly shaped prefold.  I don't remember if the pattern called for elastics or if it's something she added herself.  But I do know that she tweaked the pattern to make it more form fitting and that some of this idea is all her own.  In any case, she made about five of them, and I would put the snaps on for her, since I have the Kamsnaps pliers and she won't ever need enough snaps to justify buying a set for herself.  Despite the fact that I didn't need to be compensated, she offered me one of these adorable diapers made out of the most luscious bamboo velour and I was so in love with it, I just couldn't refuse!  It's not only soft, gentle, and fitted, they also dry quickly because  it's made of only one layer! Best of both worlds!

Check it out:

In our house we use it both covered and uncovered; for night and day.  I think it's currently my favorite diaper! :-D

(Pardon the picture quality.  I find it hard to chase my daughter down these days and get a good shot from her because she just doesn't sit STILL for anything!)

Tutorial: Adding snaps (or velcro) to prefolds

I'm going to do my best to attempt a snapping prefold tutorial, so bear with me :-D  There are no patterns I feel I can give you here, because where you place your snaps (or velcro) depends on the size of your baby and how you fold your prefold.

First, you want to fold your prefold onto your baby using the fold you normally prefer to use.  This can work with the angel fold, twist, or the jelly roll.

Take a pencil and mark the place where the back of the diaper overlaps on the front of the diaper.  If you noticed, I simply marked a square on both places--that gives me an area where my closures can safely go.  (Don't worry, these markings should come out in the wash.  However, if for some reason they don't, no worries! You're kids gonna poop on them anyway ;-P) Notice, that since I'm putting this prefold on a baby with a smaller rise, the back is folded down.  If you have a bigger baby, then folding down in the back is not necessary.  (I've altered the following photos slightly so you can see my pencil marks better)

Within the squares I've drawn, I need to decide where my snaps will go.  I use snaps from Kamsnaps.com and attach them with a $27 pair of snap pliers which I love.  I love Kamsnaps, but I think other places sell snap pliers and snaps as well so you can shop around.  All that just to say, you don't have to break the bank getting an $80 snap press.   If I'm using velcro, then I'll simply attach squares of hooks to the back closures within the squares, and strips of loops to the front panels--only on the ends--within the squares.  With snaps, it's a bit more complicated since you need to measure to make sure that your snaps are all equidistant, but you're basically going to put your studs on the back flaps and your sockets on the front panel.

Once you've measured where your snaps will go, simply add your snaps.  Add the studs to the back and the sockets to the front.  I like to add a few more to the outer edge of the front panel to leave room for growth.

I also like to add some stud snaps facing the opposite direction so that when my baby gets taller, I can unfold the back flap and continue to use the prefold.  When I unfold it, the snaps facing the opposite direction turn away from baby's skin so they never dig in.  This also means that I can use the twist fold as another option.

Here's the prefold looking at it from both the back and the front once all the snaps are in their proper places.  If you click on the picture, you'll get a bigger view so you can investigate it more if you need to.

Here's the prefold snapped a couple of ways:
1. The Jelly Roll with the back flap unfolded

2. The Twist with the back flap unfolded:

3. Angel Fold with the back flap folded down:

4. Angel Fold with the back flap unfolded for taller babies:

Here it is on Bunny:

If you want to try something really awesome, you can add elastics to get a tighter fit around the legs and contain the poop better.  I do this with the angel fold only.  You can either use another diaper to draw the elastic lines or you can fold the diaper the way you would with the angel fold and just draw a line along the fold that curves around the leg.  This is what the diaper will look like flat when the elastic is added:

Once the elastic is in, just fold like so, making sure to follow the line of the elastic, then pull the back sides out and snap it.

I don't have a picture of the snapped prefold with elastics on Bunny yet because she was napping when I took these pictures, but here it is modeled on her life sized baby doll who is about as big as she was when she was 6-9 months old.

So that's it! I hope you find this useful and easy to understand.  Let me know if there's something I can clarify for you!

A New Twist to Prefolds

 So, my daughter isn't such a big fan of Snappis.  It's not that I don't love them or think they're an awesome cloth diapering innovation--I do, but my little Bunny just doesn't.  I think they must feel uncomfortable against her bony hips or something--I figure it has something to do with her build.  I'm not sure what the issue is, but they just don't work well for us.  Besides, we like to go coverless and it's not safe to go coverless with a Snappi.  But if you want to go coverless with a prefold, you normally use pins--which I find very awkward to use.  Using them triples our time at the changing table, not to mention increasing my anxiety levels.  When we're not going coverless, we're usually using wool, so the tri-folding in a wrap isn't a convenient option for us--besides the fact that I hate the extra bulk of that diapering style.  

Before I had snap pliers from Kamsnaps.com, I had successfully added velcro to some prefolds and found that was a viable option when Bunny was small.  But she's bigger now and opening velcro is one of her favorite pastimes.  So, I decided I'd experiment with snaps.  (Remind me to do a proper tutorial on this someday soon).  I laid my daughter in the prefold and adjusted it to fit her, then made pencil markings where the back and the front of the diaper met, and added snaps to those spots.  Later, I added a couple more rows of snaps both in the closure "tabs" and the front row to accommodate growth.  Here are some of the finished products:

They worked so well that I've started adding snaps to all my prefolds.  If I want to, I can still use them the old fashioned way, or even remove the snaps, but since I love using them in this fashion so much, I don't see that happening.

An update on the weekend

Hey guys, so I'm sure some of you are wondering how last weekend went with just prefolds.

I took lots of pictures and may write a more detailed post later as a guest blogger to earn some free diapers (at this point most of my free dipes will be gifts), but my loyal readers need an update, I realize!

So, we've traveled twice before and used only cloth.  Once, when Bunny was two months old, my husband took the young adults on a weekend retreat (he's also the young adult pastor at our church) and over Christmas when we traveled 7 hours to see my family we used cloth exclusively.  Both times, all we had were pocket diapers.  At the retreat I experimented with hand washing them.  I found that it was possible, but that it's difficult to hand wash and hand dry microfiber inserts because they just hold SO MUCH WATER! I was getting blisters from wringing them out and they weren't drying fast enough! (I think I only had 15ish diapers in my stash then, and since Bunny was younger and only breastfed--no solids--at that point, she went through more.

In the end, I found a dryer and just machine dried them all.  I found that hand washing pockets is doable but not ideal

Over Christmas I just used my parents washer and dryer with the pockets.  This worked fine.  It was much like cloth diapering at home... except that pockets are sort of bulky to carry around.  I had about 20 diapers at this time.

This past weekend, I bought prefolds and flats and brought 29 of them with me. (17 prefolds and 12 flats).  I didn't realize how much less my daughter needs to be changed now that she is 7 months old and that nearly 30 diapers would be unnecessary if I was planning on washing them--which I was.  Since I'm somewhat chicken about using prefolds at night, I brought 6-8 pockets with me for night time.  She only used four.  She generally gets changed only once at night even though she wakes up more than once on some nights.

And prefolding worked well! I'm still not the best at using prefolds.  I'm awkward about putting them on with the snappi and only using a wrap.  No matter how you slice it, it will never be as easy to put a prefold or a flat diaper on a baby as it is to put an All in One or a pocket diaper--or even a fitted.

But I liked it! I didn't mind that I was awkward at it! I'm such a cloth diaper enthusiast that I enjoy trying everything!

ANd I washed them--hand washed them in the bathtub and dried them in front of a roaring fireplace.  There was a dryer available because this was a retreat center with separate houses for showers, bathrooms, washrooms, etc, but I guess I wanted to know that I would be capable of cloth diapering in a worse-case scenario.  Ha ha! Next I'll have to try it while camping :-D.  I'll wash them in the river or something while carrying my baby on my back :-P.  ANyway, the clothesline I used was a rope my husband had along for some activity he did with the kids.

Originally I'd laid them out to dry on a tightrope he'd set up for one of the challenges (let me tell you, my husband is an AMAZING youth pastor! He sets up the most intricate and wonderful retreats generally with a movie to set the stage, challenges, clues, and everything always pulls together to help the kids learn one, God-centered point, but I digress!) but since it was rainy, the outdoor clothesline/tightrope wasn't cutting it.  The rope I eventually used was red and dyed some of my diapers with an orange line, but I'm sure it will wash out.  Also, the diapers were stiff after drying in front of a fire.  I guess they'd be the same way after drying outside.  They usually aren't stiff on my drying rack in the baby's room.

From now on, if a washer/dryer is an option, I"m using it because I don't want so much stiff fabric against my baby's skin.

It turns out that I didn't need to wash them at all, though.  Bunny only went through 19 prefolds (I didn't even have to use the flats--talk about an awkward diaper to learn to use!) and four pockets.  I could have just waited until I got home.

All in all, cloth diapering at a youth retreat was a successful experience.  I enjoyed it! I don't have very many covers, though.  I've discovered that Thirsties are, by far, my favorite.  I brought four of my wool soakers, two thirsties (one Medium with velcro and one duo size 2 with snaps), a Bumkins, and two made from diaeprkit.com.  I mostly used the Thirsties and the wool ones.  But with wool I don't like to have anything OVER the cover because one of the positives of using wool is that it feels almost moist when the baby has wet so there's no guesswork about changing.  No, it doesn't leak, or get anything else wet, but it does feel warm and moist.  Have I mentioned I love wool???

So, with the next points I earn from Diaper Junction from my posts there, I'm getting at least one THirsties.  I'd get a lot more but there are lots of other things I need from them--including a diaper for my friend at church who really needs more diapers but doesn't seem to have a way to get them herself.

 Oh, and we learned that Bunny really loves loud, Christian Rock...which is a GOOD thing since having a youth pastor for a daddy means lots of loud teenagers and their awesome music and festivals such as Creation that she will attend every year for her entire life...well, maybe not this year.  I don't know if I'm brave enough to go with her this year and deal with the throngs of dirty, hot people, port-a-potties, SUN,  and washing cloth diapers.  If there ever were going to be something to put me over the edge with diapers and push me to use disposables, it would be Creation!

Back to the Basics

How to fold a prefold:

You may not need this, but for those of you, who like I once was, are petrified of prefolds, they're really quite simple with a Snappi.  And so much cheaper than any other type of cloth diaper.  Go ahead, give it a try!

And, I've heard that with the right diaper cover a Snappi isn't needed at all! But that doesn't work too well for me so I'll stick with my Snappi!