Sunday, March 21, 2010

Do I have a cloth diaper problem?

Ok so I know I have a lot of cloth diapers, but I'm not really sure how I ended up with so many.
I started out with just the old ones my mom had saved from when we were little and now I have around 150 changes in total. That's two compete sets but still when did this happen?
I've just finished getting my newborn stash all ready to go for baby #3 and I was sure I needed to get 24 preemie prefolds and a bunch of small gdiapers. I ordered 20 of the fabulous hemp fitteds from tidy tushees diaper service and that was it. add in the doublers I had made for DD that just happen to fit great in the small g's and with a set of small homemade fitteds I was given that put me over 60 changes in just my small stash. After stripping all the diapers a week ago I counted and had 8 dozen in my medium stash, not including all the dipes at Grandma's.

I think I need to start destashing a bit but I have no idea where to start, I love my Gdiapers and the whole reason I started collecting them is because I can fit more g inserts and prefolds in a load of laundry and with two in diapers soon I want to be able to fit as many in a load as possible, Our fitteds are a mainstay in our stash, the only diapers DH will use, and other then that I have 4 AIO's that I've collected from here and there. What do I get rid of?

Please someone tell me I'm not alone in this, there are other mama's out there that have ridiculously huge stashes of diapers right? right?

Friday, March 19, 2010

20 minute diaper cover

As you may or may not know, we have our third child due to arrive this June, I've never cloth diapered a newborn before, but since DD developed such a sever allergie to disposables, I don't want to risk using sposies for even the first few weeks this time. Good news is I got to build a newborn stash, bad news is I needed everything and with DH not working I didn't exactly have a great budget for new diapers. I couldn't bring myself to buy a bunch of newborn covers since this will likely be our last baby so I sat down at the sewing machine and this is what I came up with.

So far I've only made newborn covers with this pattern but I think I will make some Large ones soon as DD's medium wraps don't fit over a premium prefold very well and I want some matching for both girls.

20 minute diaper cover
Materials Needed
Sewing machine
Fleece or wool interlock (upcycled wool suit jackets work great) and thread
12" length of 1/2" wide elastic
6 socket snaps and 5 stud snaps and and caps
Snap pliers or press
or
7" loop and 3" of hook aplix or touch tape and your choice of fastener for the cord snap down

Step 1 - make your pattern
I will post the pattern I used once I get it digitized, but in the mean time you can make your own pattern to fit by simply tracing one of your fitted diapers and adding 1 1/2 inches all around. You may find it easier to make a pattern of half of a diaper folded lengthwise so that is fits on a legal sized peice of paper, or you can use a paper grocery bag to make your pattern.


Step 2 - cut your fabric
Cut two peices for each cover. layer the fabric wrong sides together and pin.

Step 3 - sew your 2 layers together
Using a straight stitch on your sewing machine stitch around the outside of your fabric staying as close to the edge as you can. Start on the top edge of the front wings and go around to the other top edge leaving a 4 or 5" opening in the front top edge. Turn fabric rightside out.

Step 4- Elastic
I prefer to make elastic casings vs stitching the elastic directly into a project, mainly because no matter how much I practise I still always end up stitching through the elastic and redering it useless. Elastic casings are just easier and more fool proof for people like me. If you prefer you could stictch the elastic directly in and save a couple of steps, or you can play it safe like I do and sew in 8" elastic casings in each leg opening and a 6" one in the center of the back edge of the diaper cover. Use a safety pin to feed the elastic into the casing. Secure one end of the elastic with a straight stitch. Pull the elastic tight and secure the other end with a straight stitch, trim excess elastic. Repeat for both legs and back edge.


Step 5 - Finish
Top stitch the opening you left in the front of the diaper cover and add your snaps or aplix. I prefer snaps so that is what I've done here. I have placed 7 socket snaps, caps in, along the front edge of the diaper cover, 2 studs, caps out, on each tab, and a single stud, cap in, directly under the center snap of the front in order to secure the cord stump fold down.


If you are using aplix you will attach a 5" strip of loop along the front of the cover, 1 1/2" of hook on each tab and 1" of loop on the inside of the back edge to secure the aplix in the wash. You will also need to attach some sort of fastener to the center front of the cover to create a cord stump dip, that could be a button or a sew on snap or you could even sew it down if you really want too.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Converting Gdiapers from Aplix to Snaps

My newest cloth diaper obsession is the gdiaper. Since we are about to have 2 in cloth I wanted to find something that I could fit more of in a load and the solution turned out to be gdiapers and prefolds. I picked up a small starter set and 2 medium starter sets on sale at London drugs for $26 each and a few good vibes at nature's fair (my local whole foods type market) for $13 each and then filled out my stash with used Gpants I bought from local and online mamas. Since I was searching for the best possible price I got quite a few dipes that had old shot aplix fasteners. I could either replace the aplix with new strips from Gdiaper Head Quarters or I could just convert them to snaps. Since I love any excuse to use my snap pliers I opted for snaps. I had some old and some new style pants to convert, the process is slightly different for the different styles but the basic principles are the same.

Step one - Remove the old aplix strips Simple remove the old aplix using a seam ripper, when you take the aplix off the back of the gpants the little snap tabs that you attach the liners to will come off as well, make sure you don't lose them, stitch them back on with a straight stitch on the sewing machine or just by hand with a needle and thread.

Step two (NS only)- tack down the fold released when the aplix is removed when the aplix is removed you will find a loose flap of fabric at the edge of the elastic waist band, simply tack it back down using a straight stitch on the sewing machine or by hand using a needle and thread.

Step three - measure out the snap placement Using a cloth measuring tape mark out the snap placement. you want 4 studs on each of the back sides and 2 sockets on each of the front tabs. A total of 8 studs on the back and 4 sockets on the front. I space the snaps 3/4" apart on the smalls and 1" apart for mediums or larges.

Step four - Apply snaps Follow the directions for your snap pliers or press to attach size 20 resin snaps. Make sure the snap caps are facing out on the front and in on the back.

Here is the full video tutorial. Happy Snapping.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Stripping diapers with RLR

My latest shipment of diaper paraphernalia arrived today (well yesterday if I hadn't been in the hospital with an IV in my arm)A new pail liner, some new to me prefolds and 5 little packets of RLR.

For those of you who don't know what RLR is, it's a laundry treatment made by Cadie, and I had heard from many a cloth diapering mam that it works wonders to remove buildup on diapers. You just throw it in the washer with your clean diapers and run a hot wash with no detergent and rinse until there are no bubbles left in the water.

I have been battling stink with my bamboo fitteds for a little while, they were fine during the day but when we used them overnight they would have the worst ammonia stink come morning. I had tried my regular 3 hot washes with no soap method of stripping them but it wasn't helping so I ordered the RLR. I figured I would split up the diapers and first run just my fitteds, microfiber gdiaper inserts and the few AIO's I have in the first load, I threw all the clean dipes in the washer dumped the little packet of white powder on top and started up the washer. Keep in mind all of these diapers where recently washed in hot water 3 times with no soap and there were no bubbles in the washer.

Here's what I got by the time the rinse was about to start.





I scooped out all the extra bubbles and then continued to run 2 rinses and then another 2 full wash and double rinse cycles until all the bubbles were gone, all the diapers came out of the washer without a hint of stink.

Next I ran a load of prefolds, none of these had any stink issues, but I figured just in case I might as well run them through with the RLR too.




And those were the diapers that (I thought) had no buildup. Now I need to find a Canadian retailer for RLR if anyone knows of one with good shipping I would love to know.

Human Again... I think

Oh what a day. 10:00 Thursday night I started to feel ill, threw up and went to bed, 45minutes later back up vomiting, 25minutes later sick again. Every 15 - 30 minutes from there on. Finally at 6:00am I decided DH should take me into the hospital. All was fine with baby but I could already feel how dehydrated I was. They pushed 1/2 L of saline and gave me a graval, another 1/2 L of saline and I managed to sleep for an hour. Even after 1L of fliuds I was still thirsty. Thank God DH took the day off work and kept the kids busy, I slept all day and night and now I think I'm human again, for sure the worst is over but I'm still afraid to eat.......

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Welcome to my chaos

Hello all
So here I am sitting at my kitchen table looking around at the three loads of laundry that needs to be folded, the dishes that need to be loaded into the dishwasher and the cheerios on the floor. Sound like your house? I hope so, I can't be the only one who lives like this can I?

It's spring break here, 2 weeks of no school and since I work in school aged childcare that means 2 weeks of full days full of up to 20 6 - 11 yr olds all day at work and then my own 2 at home and I'm in the third trimester of this pregnancy.... long story short unless I find a house elf in my back yard the cheerios are staying on the floor.

In the next 2 months we have a lot of work to do around here. We currently have 900 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 kids, 2 cats and a dog, things are getting cramped so we are adding on, problem is our back yard is somewhat of a swamp until mid April and we can't start building until it dries up a bit but then oh how wonderful it will be to put my 7 yr old and all his toys into a room I can close the door to and not go in unless something starts to smell. The babies are going to share the room DS and DD have been in, but it's getting smaller, in order to have a back door still we will need to build a hallway between the existing kids room and DS's new room and did I mention we also need to put a new window into a different wall in our room. All this has to be done before I can even think about sorting baby clothes and setting up beds. May is going to be nuts and honestly not really looking forward to the process, wish me luck.