Christmas Diaper

We started cloth diapering when my oldest daughter was one. I went out to the store and picked up some Gerber prefold diapers and plastic pants. My mother had told me stories of trying cloth with one of my brothers. They leaked all the time, she said, and were kind of a mess. After trying out the Gerber diapers and covers, I had to agree. It was pretty awful. They didn't absorb really well and they were kind of a pain. I wondered how anyone could stick with it, but I loved saving the money. Did you know that the average cost of disposables for a child is $1600.00 for two years? My daughter wasn't potty trained until 3, so add on another 800 dollars I could save. So I did some google searching and found the world of cute cloth diapering. Diapers have come a long way from Gerber prefolds, let me tell ya.

Most of our current diaper stash is prefolds (higher-quality GreenMountainDiapers prefolds) and cute Thirsties brand covers. I have, however, splurged once on a cute designer diaper sold on hyenacart.com.

After studying how the designer diaper was made, I figured it wouldn't be really hard to make my own. Here's my very first attempt at a homemade cloth diaper. I had some leftover flannel from making these ornaments, and I had some terrycloth laying around from other projects, so I thought why not make a diaper with it?

I laid out the diaper that I had purchased and traced out a rough outline on some Christmas style flannel I had leftover from making these ornaments.

I cut a piece of terrycloth the same shape. I also cut a soaker from two layers of terrycloth and a layer of flannel.

After sewing wrong sides together, trimming the seam allowance, adding elastic on the back and legs, flipping them inside-out, and top stitching, here's what it looks like. The middle part is called a soaker, and is for extra absorbency. It is easier to dry the diaper if the diaper and soaker are separate pieces instead of making one thick diaper.

I think it only took about 1 1/2 hours to make it start to finish. Here's what it looks like on my baby.

We'll see how it holds up, but I may be making more of these. Maybe he'll have a different one for every holiday. Why not have a Thanksgiving diaper? How about a 4th of July diaper? I'm excited to come up with some new diapers to add to our collection.