Cloth Wipes & DIY Detergent for Diapers

So we've been cloth diapering with our son for a while. (He is almost 22 months) We're trying to continue being more environmentally friendly and more cost efficient so I made some cloth wipes. I used a simple tutorial I found on pintrest that used fleece and water. Easy enough right? Wrong. After a few days the fleece started to leave little fleece bunnies on little man's behind and all over his cloth diapers (even turning the insides of them blue!). I don't know if I used the wrong type of fleece or what, but we instantly scratched that idea and went back to the throw away kind.

Then I found this tutorial about using flannel. So I made six cloth wipes to try out and see how they do. They did awesome. I use just water and they work great! SO much better than the throw away kind (esp. on big messes). I made some more and I only need to rewet wipes every other day or so. The tea tree oil isn't necessary when using cloth wipes, however, I did use it when my son had an extremely bad diaper rash and *poof* it was gone in a 24 hours. Awesome.



As for the detergent I use on my cloth diapers, I highly recommend this one created by Hive of the Honey Bee. Super simple: 1 cup of oxy clean, 1 cup of washing soda, 1 cup of baking soda. I initially chose this one out of all the other homemade recommendations because this one is borax free. I avoid all cleaners that use borax because of its toxic properties. Ick. I am not bringing that into my house!

I've used it for about three weeks so far and it works great! Two days ago, I noticed that the diapers were getting a little scratchy and rough, so I did a cycle of diapers using Snuggle fabric softener and All Laundry detergent, followed by a cycle with this DIY detergent, before hanging them out to dry. So far, the diapers have remained super soft since with no reaction to little man.

Catching up: Part 2

In the previous post I mentioned that I had been crafting, but not posting. This is the second part of my "catch up" post series. Hopefully the last catch up post. I'm sure I've got all the photos tthat I need off of my husband's computer.

Here is the remainder of the diapers I made for my little man. I made these using the Babyville Boutique PUL with the dinosaurs, monters (my personal favorite), and yellow.















After making the diapers I had a bunch of extra PUL so I went onto Babyville's website in the hopes of finding some projects and I did. So for my little man I made some cubes (which I stuffed with filling). I made one with 5" squares and another with 3" cubes. For the 5" cube uses the dino PUL and the 3" cube uses the owl PUL.











Onto other things...

My mom had this tradition at Christmas that every year each of kids got a Christmas ornament (she still does it). Back in the day she used to cross stitch our ornaments every year. So I've started this tradition with my son.


I wrote his name and the year 2011 on the back with a fabric marker.

For Christmas, I made my son a monkey out of yo-yos. (Love those things!). I used a simplicty pattern that I picked up during a JoAnn's 99 cent sale. On the top it said "Simplicity Archive" on it, so I have a feeling this has been around for a while. He's bigger than my son:









... and that my friends, wraps up all the crafts I completed in 2011. What a year!

Picture Dump

I have been very busy crafting, however, I've been very bad about posting. However, I feel that being a full time mom, wife, teacher, and part time student earns me a little bit of a reprieve. Life has been busy!

My husband and I took the little man up north (where it was about 27 degrees outside) and he needed a winter hat and mittens! So on the drive up (it helped that we got stuck behind an accident - no one was hurt - that shut the freeway down for two hours) north I completed two hats and two pairs of mittens for him to wear on his adventure to see Santa.





Both of the above hats were done on the pink KK loom. All the blogs and tutorials online for knitting baby hats on the loom said to use the small one, but sorry, my son was born with a 14 inch head, there was no way this loom was going to make a big enough hat. It took some experimentation to finally figure out which size was good enough.

Next was the challenge of having to create mittens for the little guy. I couldn't find any decent pattners online for making infant mitts on the loom, so again I experimented and are quiet proud of what I created. Simple, but very effective.





I will draft up a pattern eventually for the mittens. If you've worked with the looms before you can probably figure out how I did it, it was really simple. Mittens were completed on the flower loom.

After all that, then I had to tackle Little Man's stocking for his first Christmas. I was just going to buy one, however, my husband instisted that I make his, since I made everyone elses.



A close up of the super cute fabric:



I made him several stocking stuffers (in addition to what I bought - he is such a spoiled baby!). The first batch is three different taggie toys:







The letter "A" is his favorite one I think. He's always grabbing for that one.

A few weekends ago I went on a diaper making craze. I wanted to have enough diapers to at least get us through a day. So I made several diaper stuffers and a few diapers.













I have many more photos to post but first I have to get them off of my camera.

End of Line

Whew... caring for a little one is exhausting! I haven't had much time to post, let alone make anything. However, here are some things I've been working on in the last few weeks:

Dinosaur Ribbon Rattle:


I googled "dinosaur images", printed one out, traced into fabric, sewed it to together (with the ribbon), and stuffed it full of stuffing and jingle bells. My little man loves it. He holds it around the neck all time (because its the easiest place for him to hold it) so it always looks like he's strangling it. :)

I've continued to work on those diapers. I made him this orange one, using the same Babyville Boutique pattern as before. It leaked out the side a bit so we added extra snaps to make it smaller in length and it seemd to hold up okay:


He doesn't nap much during the day so I haven't had time to get any more of them done. (He does sleep through the night except when he wants to eat, so one must be grateful of that!)

Next up is my "mystery project" that requires lots and lots of yo-yos. Below is the first yo-yo that I made and I've fallen in love with making these things!



This "mystery" project also includes the following:



Care to take a guess as to what I'm making????

That's all I have for now to share. My little man just fell asleep is his swing so I'm going to take these few precious moments that I have and go clean up my kitchen!

Adventures in Diapering

So I've been trying to write this post ALL DAY. What happened to Little Man napping all day long and Mom being able to get stuff done? Like laundry, homework, craft projects??? He slept for a few hours this morning, which of course my husband and I conked out with him on the bed, because we were so exhausted. For the past three hours he's been awake and fussy. I couldn't get him to sleep or calm down. I hand him over to my husband and in less than a minute he's passed out alseep. What in the world little man? I swear he hates me, my husband says he doesn't. He just loves his daddy. Whatever, hubby, whatever.

My husband has been big on trying the cloth diapers, something that up until now I have been avoiding. But dang are diapers expensive! So dear hubby bought a one size only diaper from Bum Genius. We gave it a try and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The diapers are about $20 a piece, so to get 5 of them it would be around $100. My husband took one look at the price tags and the diaper he purchased and decided that I could make those.

Well then...

We went to JoAnn Fabrics and holy cow what do you know? There was new line of diaper making products put out by Babyville Boutique. We looked at the cost of items and the book and I dug out all of the 40% and 50% off coupons that I had stored up. The cost of materials wasn't too expensive (about $14.99 for PUL fabric for three diapers) and I got EVERYTHING at 40 to 50% off thanks to those wonderful coupons. So the cost per diaper (not including the cost of the tools or thread) is about $3.50-$5.00 a diaper. What a difference from $20.00!

Of course, like with every big project there is a crazy snag. The fact that the Babyville Plyers were out of stock at my local JoAnns. *gasp* So I had to go to the next closest JoAnns (which was only about 20 minutes away but I didn't want to be seperated from Little One for that long). So I drove up there, grabbed one of the lose bloody plier tools, slammed down a 50% off coupon and wnet home with my prize:



Now, I was armed and ready to make my diapers!

So I opened the diaper making book (published by Babyville Boutique) to the center pages to make the flannel pocket diaper. A few things I've learned:

1. DON'T invest in the template plastic as recommended. A regular hole punch will not reach where you need to punch the holes and trying to fold the plastic down to punch them is a pain in the butt. I recommend using a piece of cardstock. Heck, even a piece of paper would be good enough.

2. It is vitally important to make sure that the plastic snaps are centered on the snap pliers. If not, you'll crack the sides of the snaps. I did this about three times, before figuring out why I kept breaking them.

3. This is the best way I've ever seen to apply snaps

4. I hate sewing elastic. What a pain.

Snap Pliers? Awesome. Highly recommend this tool and the plastic snaps, even if you are not making diapers. WAY better than sew on snaps.

The book? I'd give the instructions a 4 out of 5 stars. I would not recommend this project to beginners (although why a beginner would want to tackle diaper making is beyond me). There were some items left out in the instructions (such as leaving space at the top of the diaper to turn it right side out) that would leave a rookie confused and with a mess on his/her hands.

One thing that really bothers me is that there are several places in the pattern book where they tell you to reference their website. Guess what? Their website says "COMING SOON". In this day and age I think its important to make sure that your website is up and running before your product hits the shelves, especially if you're telling people in your book to go to your website for more information!

But I digress, overall I am very impressed with Babyville Boutique and went back to JoAnns today to get more PUL fabric in order to make some more diapers.

It took about three hours (working here and there) to make the diaper and the soaker yesterday. I had to keep stopping because Little Man needed to eat (I'm convinced that he's going through a growth spurt because I swear he's constantly attached to me). I started with the diaper. I couldn't find microfleece at the fabric stores, so I ended up using flannel.


(somehow I messed up on the wings and I had to move my snaps back on the wings in order to make it a successful diaper.





After succesfully completing the diaper I started on the soaker (super easy):


I didn't want to test it out over night so we tested it out first thing this morning. I made the small diaper and the small soaker. He has some room to grow into it but not much, since I messed up on the wings. About five seconds after I put him in it, he pooped. I was hoping to test it out with some urine (what has motherhood done to me?) to see if it was as absorbant as it needed to be and if the legs were tight enough to keep it in the diaper. Oh well. Its being washed, so I'll update later with how it held up in the wash.

I wanted to try and make a one size only diaper today, but the Little Man is refusing to sleep. Its 10:45 at night and he's back to being cranky...