Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Day 3: DIY Flats and Covers

Today is day three of Dirty Diaper Laundry's Flats and Handwashing Challenge.  Today is an open topic day and this wouldn't be a crafting blog if I didn't cover some ways that you can DIY your flats and cover stash.  I purchased (or borrowed) a lot of the items I am using for the challenge but if you want to save some money you could easily sew a lot of items yourself. 

 
Flats
You can turn almost any absorbent materials into a flat!  Old Cotton or Flannel sheets can be easily cut up into the desired size (27x27 inches is standard) and then turn under the edge and sew or serge the edges.  Diaper Sewing Supplies sews beautiful bamboo terry material that would make soft and luxurious flats (I use the bamboo terry for all the diaper inserts I make).  In a pinch you can also cut the arms and neck off of a T-shirt and have two flats.  The beauty of the T-shirt flats is that they don't require any sewing to finish the edges because the material won't fray.  One of the things that I did DIY for the challenge is "half flats" (I just made up this name).  I wanted something that I could use as a doubler without having the bulkiness of actually using a second flat so I cut some of the flats that I had in half, serged the edges and they have worked great so far as doublers.
 
Covers

 
After buying some covers and not being thrilled with the choices I decided to make some of my own.  I used a free pattern that I found online that included front snaps as well as front and back flaps to hold my pad folded flats in place.  The tutorial and pattern are actually really good and I made two covers out of PUL that I had already.  These covers are now my favorite out of the 7 covers that I have.  For each cover they took approximately 1.5 hours to complete and cost me about $8 each. 
 
Accessories
Some of the accessories that I either had or made for the challenge included cloth wipes and fleece liners.  I love using cloth wipes and I make mine with one side terry cloth and one side flannel.  These so far have been easy to handwash but they are very slow to dry since they are thick.  If I was making wipes just for handwashing I would probably just do one layer of terry cloth and serge the edges.  I normally use disposable diapers on my daughters at night but in preparation for the Challenge and my Flats trial I actually started using my flats on them at night.  Because I didn't want them to feel the wetness for 12 hours at night while sleeping I cut some fleece liners.  I have micro fleece remnants from making diapers and I just cut them large enough so that I can wrap them around a pad folded flat. 

These are my favorite DIY crafts for the challenge and I like most of them so much I plan on using them as part of my regular stash even after the challenge.
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1 comment:

  1. Great idea, although I never got into the cloth diaper thing, I love diys that help save me a trip to the store and $!

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