Monday, June 21

addiction: cloth diaper covers!

cloth diaper covers

holy moly, this is an addiction. I am trying so hard not to head to goodwill and make this addiction really serious. I want to see how well these wool and fleece covers work with my diapers (and of course Jane) before I go crazy though. So I just used an old sweater of mine, a sad end to a nice sweater of Gregg's (accidental trip in the dryer), and some leftover fleece.

cloth diaper covers

After I made the fleece ones, I was a bit concerned the fleece isn't of high enough quality to stop leaks. I read somewhere it is best to get polar fleece, like the stuff Northface jackets are made out of. The fleece I used is some cheap stuff from Joann's I got to make Lill's robe. So one cover has the extra soaker panel (see pattern link) sewed in and the other has a double layer of fleece for the whole body of the diaper.

cloth diaper covers
I can't wait to see Jane's little chubby legs sticking through these holes!

The wool covers are off the charts cute! I was a bit confused on which way the grain of a knit garment would go. So I may have messed up there. I had to recut some of the waist and leg bands for what seemed to be a more stretchier band going against the grain or what I thought would be the grain. Does anybody know which direction the grain is in? I also didn't felt the grey sweater, remembering after the sewing was finished, that I had read that a small amount of felting is helpful. So I am wondering how the felted vs non-felted covers will fair.

cloth diaper covers

Pattern: found here. genius, genius, genius!! what a fast and simple way to make a wool diaper cover! If you do this, make sure to read all the comments, there was some very helpful information in there.

Size: all newborn. I am waiting to make more in bigger sizes to see if I like what I did with these ones. I have just used diaper covers that are made out of PUL so I am very curious about using wool and fleece and making them for so cheap! Does anyone have experience with wool or fleece covers?

cloth diaper covers

Just in case anyone asks, when Jane first comes, we got some kissaluv fitted diapers (pictured in the background above). We used these with Lilly and they worked so well for us. Easy to care for and excellent at containment! They do need a cover so hopefully these covers will work but we will buy some small PUL covers too just in case, those sure work great. When Jane gets older, we have a large stack of all in ones and chinese pre-folds. The all in ones were sort of a bummer to me, they leaked with Lills and I had to use a PUL cover with them, unless of course you changed them every hour which seemed completely crazy. The chinese pre-folds were my favorite from 3 to 6 months. We stopped cloth diapering Lills at 6 months because that is when she started daycare (not a cloth diaper friendly place) and solid food poo! yikes!!! Jane will start daycare at about 3 months, so we will have to wait and see what happens this time around. But we are hoping to go a bit longer this time, if it works for us. I do get asked why we like cloth diapering and I really can't answer it. I just like it!

Monday, June 7

baby saskia

baby saskia dress

I have been loving all the crochet baby dresses that Alicia Paulson has been making up. Actually, all the dresses, she has been sewing up too. So when she put up a call to have some pattern testers, I signed up for any dress, any size, please count me in! I ended up with her Saskia dress in a 6 month size! Yahoo! a hippy dress for Janey!

It was such a nice break from knitting Jane's blanket, which has been a pretty long process but I just started on the 6th (out of 6) skein last night! So I hoping by the end of the week that project will be done, because several little things are waiting patiently. Working on this dress though, I did forget how quick crochet is compared to knitting, plus wee sized baby things = fast fast fast!

Pattern: Saskia dress; coming soon from Alicia Paulson

Yarn: Summer Linen DK in five colors: natural, taupe, kiwi, sky blue, steel blue
baby saskia dress

I tried the dress on a 9 month old neighbor. It was a bit long on her so I folded up the bottom and created a little hem with some slip stitches, a nice little border of color.

baby saskia dress

I really like this dress but I am wondering how the sleeves will work on Jane. They are super cute and wide just not sure how little Jane's arms will fair in there. I am guessing Jane will wear this in winter with a long sleeve onesie and tights! I can't wait! I wonder which sweater she will choose to wear with it??