For B's Baby

Twelve Little Diapers All In A Row....

It's Time!

It's that time already---time to get Emily potty trained. I dug out all the old training pants and plastic pants from days gone by, used by all 6 of my previous babies. Ugh! I really dislike those plastic pants! So, I decided to sew some waterproof panties. This past week I did some experimenting with patterns. The first is a morph of the free Easterbunz and the Goodness Gracious patterns. The second and third pants are two different versions of the Potty Dance Pants pattern. I'm not sure that I like any of these and may try to come up with my own pattern. Actually, I am hoping that Emily will get potty trained quickly, and then I won't have to fuss with any of this.


In a diaper-making mood, I also decided to make some gift diapers for a friend who recently had a baby. She uses cloth diapers and mentioned to me that she needed more and wished she could afford pocket diapers. Since I so happen to love the Chloe Toes pattern, I decided to make my friend some diapers. The rose-colored PUL (outer fabric) and the mauve microfleece (inner fabric) came from a nice lady who offered the fabric on freecycle. She also gave me a large bag full of hemp scraps, and that's what I've used for soakers in the training pants and for the stuffers of the pocket diapers. What was exciting about all this--in addition to the fact that I got some great fabric--is that this lady also loves to knit. She hand-dyes yarn and showed me all sorts of luscious goodies at her home. What fun!

Okay, I'm outta here....
Ruth

Fancy Pants

Mostly for the ladies on the diaper sewing list, I am posting a picture of the diapers I made Emily this week. I used the

ChloeToes

pattern for these "pocket" diapers and as before, I found the pattern easy to make.



Since I do not have a snap press I had to use hook and loop tape for the closure. This close-up picture shows how I put the Aplix hook over the ends of the FOE, thus eliminating the need to finish the ends of the FOE.

Thanks to Catharine for cutting all the diaper parts out for me!
Ruth

Diaper Jargon

The three bridesmaids' dresses that we are making are finished except for the hems. We had some fitting issues with Heather's dress, so it took longer than we anticipated. Jessica is starting The Dress today.

I did manage to catch a little bit of sewing time to make Emily some new diapers. I just love using cloth diapers on Emily! Strange, I know, to most people. I'm thankful for my good cloth-diaper-loving friend, Tricia. We encourage and support each other in our habit. :-) She is so generous and recently gave me a bunch of covers that her Emma has outgrown. I have been putting them to good use! Thanks, Tricia!

The diapers I just made Emily are pocket diapers with a microfleece inner layer, a pul outer layer, aplix closures, laundry tabs, crossover tab, t&t without the topstitching, and a microfiber insert. I realize that most of this diaper jargon won't be comprehensible to many of you unless you use cloth diapers too--- kind of like a secret language for cloth diaper users!

I'm posting pictures of Emily and her new diapers, and also a picture of the knotted dolls that Tricia made from the same pattern I used. Tricia used flannel for her dolls and I think they are adorable.

off to see if Jessica needs help on The Dress.
Ruth

Pictures of Past Projects

I thought I'd post a few pictures of some of the sewing projects I've done in the past since I don't have pictures taken of the more recent things. These little purses were made from an Amy Butler pattern called the Dorothy Bag. Katie and I each made two using fabric from my stash. She gave 3 of them as gifts and I kept one. These patterns were simple to make, but in my opinion, the directions were too wordy. :-) The green purse was adapted from another pattern that I found clearanced at a local shop. I don't remember the name of the pattern, but I love how this purse came out. This was my first time to put in a magnetic clasp, and I found it quite easy to do. The fabric is from Amy Butler's Ginger Bliss collection. Everytime I use this purse, I get lots of compliments. In the second picture you can see all the pockets I added to the inside.



The next several pictures are some items I have made for Emily. Since I mostly use cloth diapers on Emily, I enjoy sewing diaper covers in cute print fabrics. The diaper covers are made with an inner layer of leakproof PUL (polyurethane laminated fabric) and the outer cover is a cotton print. I have bound the edges in foldover elastic.


The knotted star dolls are some that I made for baby gifts. I think I made 10 or so in both blue and pink and have given most of them away. Of course, I kept a pink doll for Emily. The dolls were from a pattern I found online, and when I find the site, I'll post the link. These dolls made up fairly quickly, and they make great gifts. Another gift idea is the embellished burp cloths. I made these for Emily by adding a border of fabric to edges of store-bought prefold diapers. Two of the burp clothes were made from birds-eye diaper fabric, and I hand-embroidered the little animals on the fronts.

Pictured next is a little snuggy blankie that I made for Emily out of one layer of flannel and one layer of fleece with ribbon loops around the edges. After seeing an expensive brand of these little blankies online, I just had to make one myself. I had so much fun choosing the ribbons and sewing this up, and my version didn't cost 1/4 of the "name brand" blankies. Emily loves to finger the ribbons and put them in her mouth.

Well, I just have to add two more pictures! Emily is now 7 months old and is my sweet little darling baby. At times it feels a bit surrealistic to me to have both a 21 year-old daughter (Jessica) and a baby at the same time, but both are dear to my heart (along with my other children of course!) and I wouldn't trade either of them for the world.

Ruth