Cloth Pre-Folds & Thrifted Wool

So, I mentioned recently that we quit our diaper service simply because it was becoming easy enough with Levi that we knew we could do it on our own (especially after bringing cloth with us to Italy and seeing that we DID do it on our own). The other reason was cost. Two babies with a cloth service was going to be too much especially after this whole ridiculous HST crap brought the price up considerably. What is with taxing a cloth diaper service???

I thought about putting together some pre-folds like the ones in Amanda Blake Soule's book Handmade Home, and finally just got serious about it this past week. This will save us from buying the first stages of newborn and small size diapers - hopefully...



So thanks to my hubs for humouring me and accepting my plan less than 2 weeks before our babe's due date! I have made 10 so far as a test to see how we feel with them. They are made out of old t-shirts and a few old flannel blankets, and one side is from a large piece of super soft flannel that I just bought brand new. For the 10 nappies it cost under 2 bucks to make (only the new flannel cost me). Not too shabby. The soaker in the middle is a mix of t-shirts, flannel & terry cloth (again all of it from our old stuff). We'll see how we go with them.

My man has promised to keep an open mind. As we have been spoiled with our deluxe cloth diapers, I'm afraid his faith will be lost at the first blow-out, but we shall see!



I am highly sensitive to wool, so haven't ventured to make more of these yet, but this wool cover was made for Levi by my mom and I'll for sure be giving it a try. If it doesn't seem to bother the newbie I have a couple of thrifted wool sweaters waiting in the wings to become covers. It seems they come highly recommended by a lot of people as opposed to your average waterproof cover so it's worth trying.

Speaking of thrifted wool sweaters and that lovely book Handmade Home, (which I seriously can't get enough of, and I have tagged nearly every other page for everything I want to stitch up!), I made a couple of her Family Sweater Hats for myself and baby-to-be yesterday and they honestly took maybe 20 minutes each to put together. Can't wait to see it on our little one. Hubby and levi will be scoring one of these soon as well!





xo

Cloth Nappies

We have decided to go it alone with our nappies. We have been using a service since our bub was born, but have decided we could save a lot of money doing it ourselves. We have been really happy with the nappies we have been using, and the service is moving away from this particular brand which benefits us greatly. We were able to buy a bunch from them at a fraction of the cost of buying them brand new, and we save ourselves the risk of not liking whatever new type we would spend our money on.
While we were in Italy, we brought 20 nappies with us, and found the extra work involved in washing the nappies ourselves was minimal. A few extra moments a day to rinse out the especially gruesome ones, other than that all you're dealing with is an extra load of laundry and really, when you have a baby, one more load makes little difference.

We'll see how this whole thing pans out when a second diaper wearing little enters our world. We have contemplated using the service again for the first couple months of newbies life since things will be pretty hectic, and they do go through about 12 diapers per day. Many, many people have done this before me, so I'm sure I can handle it, and I would like to give it a try. We have bought medium and large size from the service, but I plan to make some for the earlier stage, as are seen in Amanda Blake Soule's book Handmade Home. We'll see how it goes. Adding this to my aggressive list of handmade goals? hmmm... I maybe be overstepping, especially since I seem to have hit a wall of exhaustion this week. Could be just a post-holiday slump...



We have had great success with the MotherEase diaper covers. We have tried several different types, and find that many seem to have a material on the edges that really soak up the moisture thereby soaking through the baby's clothes - Namely Kushies. Bummis were not so bad, and definitely much better than Kushies, but we still had a lot of soak-throughs. I would like to give wool pants a try. My mom had made a pair for Levi but I just never put them on him - maybe because I am so sensitive to wool I was worried they would irritate his skin. I have read of so many people swearing by them, that I will definitely try that pair on the newbie.

Anyway, we quit the service as of our Monday pick-up, so our first load of washed-at-home nappies just came out of the dryer.



Easy peasy. After reading up a bit, we put the nappies through a hot water cycle with an extra rinse. I'm feeling good so far about the whole plan - Less money leaving our pockets, and we're still sticking to our guns on keeping the cloth.
Wish us luck!