I made my first diaper!

Yesterday I made my very first cloth diaper. It's a fitted diaper made out of an old pair of flannel pajama bottoms from the Gap. The elastic was shot so it was a prime candidate for the metamorphosis. Check it out:

I took pictures of each step so that I could share how I made my diaper. Since I may want to make diapers to sell in the future (after I've perfected my craft, of course) I wanted to make my own pattern. I started with a Huggies size 4 diaper since that's what my twins are wearing right now. I folded some paper in half and traced the outline of the diaper. I also had to cut the elastic in the diaper to get it to lie straight.

Then I removed the diaper and smoothed out the lines. I opened up the paper and lay the diaper inside to see how the shape looked. I made sure to keep in mind that I would need about a 3/8" seem allowance around the entire thing.

Here are the flannel pants that I have chosen to recycle.

Next, I cut out three layers of flannel using the pattern (folded in half to achieve the best symmetry). You need one layer for the outside of the diaper, one layer for the inside, and a third layer between the two that will be hidden. The hidden layer is the one that you sew your absorbent layers to.

I'm not thrilled with the pattern I created to make my absorbent pad. I think it's oddly shaped and nothing like I've seen on other diaper making sites. But the good news is that this layer will be hidden so no one will see it anyway. I cut two layers of flannel and one layer of zorb. The zorb is pinned between the two flannel layers. I used a zig-zag stitch and went around the entire thing. If you have a serger, you can serge this. I don't have a serger (yet).

After you zig-zag or serge your soaker, it needs to be sewn to the hidden layer of fabric. I pinned it down and sewed a straight line close to the edge.

With the hidden layer complete, the diaper was now ready to be sewn together. This flannel didn't really have a right side because both sides look exactly the same. If there were a right side, I would have put them right sides together for this step. So the top layer would be the outer diaper fabric, then the inner diaper fabric, and then the hidden layer with the soaker facing in. I could have had the soaker facing out, but then I would have had to switch places with my inner & outer fabric. I'm going to try that next time to see if it makes a difference. I think it makes a difference if you are sewing your elastic down (rather than make a casing like I did).

Then I sewed around the entire permiter with about a 3/8" seem allowance (slightly larger than the 1/4" elastic that I used in the next step).

I sort of guessed where the elastic should go (again, using my Huggies as an example) and tacked it down with pins, then sewed it into the seam allowance by going backwards and forwards with a zig-zag. I cut about 5.5" for the back and 5" for the legs. I'm estimating this fitted diaper to be a size medium.

At this point, the diaper was ready to be turned inside out. Et voila! Now the layers were in their proper places. I took this picture before I stuck my hands in and smoothed out the edges. I also snipped the curves and cut the corners prior to doing this, you know, all that good sewing 101 jazz. I could have also used an iron since there's no PUL in this diaper... but I didn't.

After smoothing out the edges I turned in the open part at the front of the diaper and pinned it closed. I was now ready to top stich the entire diaper and make the casings for my elastic. I should point out that after doing this I realized that this front part of my diaper was too high. I ended up cutting off almost a full inch of what you see in this picture. I'll have to adjust my pattern accordingly. The wings in front are also a little on the long side, which would be good if this were a side snap diaper... but it's not. When I got to the elastic, I just pushed it towards the outer edge and held it flat to create the casing.

Here is my daughter, Taylor, modeling the finished product. I secured it with a Snappi for now, but I'm going to test out my new snap pliers and put some snaps on this diaper soon. It was my first time using a Snappi and I couldn't quite get the one that goes down to the crotch to attach properly. My model did not want to sit still long enough for me to figure it out.



I should add that I have no idea how absorbent this diaper is because Taylor did not pee in it. She only wore it for about half an hour and it was dry when I took it off.