Making your own cloth diapers

bellie1223

We are cloth diapering and love it so far! I only have about 25 pocket diapers (mix of bg, rumparooz, alvas, Glow Bug, Coola baby); we're on a budget so I was thinking about trying to sew a few more of my own since I have a ton of extra fabric around. My sewing skills are beginning to intermediate. I've found about 20 different patterns online, some with instructions and some without. Just wondering if anyone here has made their own and if there's a specific pattern that works better than others? Any tips would be appreciated!

freezorburn

A few of the old regs had some experience making cloth diapers. You might be able to find some information in old threads. 

kaitykins

Diapersewingsupplies.com has PUL fabric and absorbant fabric for this task. I am making flip style diapers and made the pattern based on my flip diapers.

noelietrex

It may be a bit late since you posted this a month ago, but I recently decided to sew most of my own stash and it went over really well. We are doing prefolds with covers (mainly because simple covers are what's easiest to sew and like you I'm beginner-intermediate level with my sewing skills).

For a newborn pattern I printed out and cut from this pattern:
https://www.darlingdiapers.com/Darling Diapers Free Newborn Fitted Pattern2009.pdf

But I followed along with this tutorial because I felt it was easier and more beginner-level:
https://www.adreamcrafter.com/2013/06/how-to-sew-your-own-cloth-diapers-free.html

My newborns turned out like this:



The Facebook groups Fluff Love Sewing and Cloth Diaper Sewing have been crazy helpful and both groups have free patterns you can download from their pages "files", and usually lots of examples how they turned out when other members sewed from them.

For my one-sizes I did end up modifying and creating my own pattern from several other freebies. The newborn size was easiest so I'd start there and then move up once you have more of a feel for what you like and what you struggle with.

Hope this helps and feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk cloth diaper sewing!! I'm still trying to figure out what to do for prefolds. I don't know if sewing them is realistic or I should just go ahead and buy... I'd love to chat about it all sometime!

grogu

@noelietrex  I have found a couple patterns for prefolds- one using towling as the soaker and another using a series of folds. 
I am using old flannel blankets my mum gave to me to make them. 

https://www.diaperswappers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=595293

https://christadovel.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Sew-Prefold-Diapers

bellie1223

@noelietrex thanks for the post, your diapers turned out super cute! I've put my project on hold since starting a new job I don't have much free time for sewing I'll check out your links and hopefully get around to working on it in the next few weeks. 

noelietrex

@squishsquash86 Thank you so much for the links!! I haven't seen these around on Pinterest. I'll definitely be pinning to try them out

@bellie1223 No sweat! Because these are simple covers- cut 2 pieces, sew together, sew in elastic, flip and top stitch, add only 5 snaps, I've been able to crank out about 1 every 30-45 minutes start to finish. Finished my stash in 3 Sunday afternoons. Just for a time reference. They're much less intensive than patterns with gussets or pockets or AI2's just FYI

princessconsuela1986

@noelietrex did you see the elastic to the PUL and outer fabric? Or just the PUL? 

noelietrex

princessconsuela1986 said:

@noelietrex did you see the elastic to the PUL and outer fabric? Or just the PUL? 

I sewed it to all of the fabric to the outside of the stitching- usually all 3 fabrics, but if my edges got wonky then just whatever was there.

princessconsuela1986

@noelietrex thanks! I just made my first one and it seemed weird before I top stitched it. Still a little wonky but it'll do