the peaceful peacock

The Boy in his new drawers.

In this post, I’ll be explain­ing how to cut the dia­pers. In the inter­est of sav­ing some con­fu­sion, the actual sewing instruc­tions are posted as Part 3. The pat­terns are now avail­able in The Store for pur­chase if you are not inter­ested in draft­ing your own pat­tern for these dia­pers.

Here we go!

Cut­ting the Diapers

This pat­tern was cre­ated with the use of repur­posed mate­ri­als in mind. A full size fit­ted flan­nel sheet (which I found at a thrift store for $2) and one or two reg­u­lar size tow­els will yield about 10 medium sized diapers.

Step One: Pre­pare the fab­ric by pre­wash­ing and press­ing. San­i­tize sheets and tow­els if nec­es­sary by adding a bit of Bac-Out or bleach to the water.

Step Two: If using a fit­ted sheet, cut off the elas­tic from the edg­ing and cut the cor­ner seams so that the sheet lies flat. (The sheet is the pur­ple fabric…don’t you love the kooky vin­tage fab­ric back­ground? Yard sale.)

Step Three: Fold the fab­ric in half or in quarters–whichever way works best for you and will give you the most dia­pers from your sheet.

Step Four: Lay the dia­per pat­tern on top of the fab­ric and cut around it. Now don’t get all excited and cut the pat­tern into bits no mat­ter how much fun you think it might be. Each dia­per will require two pieces of fabric.

Time Saver: As you cut out a cou­ple of dia­pers, use the pieces to lay out where your next dia­pers will be cut. The fab­ric will just kind of stick there so you will not need to use pins (that’s why the pat­terns avail­able in The Store are made from fab­ric rather than paper). This also makes it really easy to visu­ally deter­mine how to get the most dia­pers out of your fabric.

Step Five: To cut the inserts, lay the insert pat­tern on top of one of the tow­els and cut around it. It is up to you to deter­mine how many lay­ers of absorbency you would like. For day­time use for the aver­age wet­ter, one layer should suf­fice. For night­time use or for a heavy wet­ter, at least two lay­ers should be used. Remem­ber that mul­ti­ple lay­ers will cre­ate bulk.

Well, that wasn’t so bad now was it? To clar­ify, here are your options with the diapers:

• Buy a pat­tern from the Shop or
• Draft your own pat­tern from my instructions
• Cut your fab­ric (this post)
• Sew the dia­pers using a serger or a stan­dard sewing machine.

That should cover it. Please feel free to con­tact me if you run into any trou­ble or need fur­ther clarification!

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There is such a learn­ing curve to babies. As the boy grows, I keep dis­cov­er­ing all of these tricks and tools that almost make me want to have another baby just so I can use them on the new kid from the get-go. That’s how I feel about these hand­made cloth diapers.

These are what our grannies used to make for their babies–a tried and true, sim­ple, inex­pen­sive, eco­log­i­cal way of dia­per­ing your tots. Unlike pre­folds (which seem to be the norm these days), these dia­pers are slim and form-fitting while still being absorbent. This tuto­r­ial is divided into three parts: Part One con­sists of the direc­tions for draft­ing the dia­pers, Part Two explains the cut­ting pro­ce­dure, and Part 3 details the sewing process.

The fol­low­ing pat­tern is for a medium sized dia­per.  These are sized to get a whole lot of use from wee to mam­moth so you prob­a­bly won’t have to make a new batch very often. The medi­ums appear to fit 15–30 pounds pretty com­fort­ably.  To make size small, sub­tract two or three inches from the height and eye­ball the shape.  To make size large, add two or three inches to the length and widen the bum sec­tion of the dia­per a bit.

After putting these into use for some time, it is advis­able to line the dia­per with absorbent mate­r­ial (like hemp fleece, sec­tions cut from an old towel, mul­ti­ple lay­ers of flan­nel, or those super-absorbent tow­els that are avail­able in auto­mo­tive stores).

Sup­plies

In addi­tion to your func­tional sewing machine, scis­sors, and iron­ing equip­ment you will need:

• a tape measure
• a straight edge (a rec­tan­gu­lar ruler that is used with a rotary mat works best)
• old flan­nel sheets
• an old towel or two
• a marker
• a serger is help­ful but not necessary
• one large sheet of paper at least 20“x20” (a piece of newsprint will work great)
• one reg­u­lar sized piece of paper at least 10“x7”

Part One: Draft­ing the Pattern

Take a deep breath. This will be much less painful than you think.

Step 1: Using the marker and your straight edge, draw a line down the cen­ter of your large piece of paper mea­sur­ing 17 inches. This is the cen­ter of your dia­per lengthwise.

Step 2: Mark and num­ber each inch along the line. You will use these points as coor­di­nates for the sides of the diaper.

Step 3: Mark both the top/front edge and the bottom/back edge of the dia­per. For the top/front edge of the dia­per, mea­sure 6 1/2 inches from the cen­ter on each side. This line will total 13 inches. For the bottom/back edge, mea­sure 9 1/2 inches from the cen­ter on each side. This line will total 19 inches. So far so good!!

Step 4: Ok, this part is tricky to describe. You will be using the marks on the cen­ter line to mea­sure out and mark points on one side of the dia­per. You may of course do this on both sides, but the plan is to mark the dots, con­nect the dots, fold the dia­per down the cen­ter line, and use that to mark the other side. Got it? You guys are smart, hang in there.

Alright, shoul­ders back, deep breath, now go!

From each point along the cen­ter line of the dia­per, mark:

• Point 1–this is already a part of your top/front edge. If you were to mark a point here it would be at 6 1/2″ (where the line ends).
• Point 2–6 1/2″
• Point 3–6 1/4″
• Point 4–4 1/4″
• Point 5–4″
• Point 6–4″
• Point 7–4″
• Point 8–4 1/4″
• Point 9–4 1/2″
• Point 10–4 3/4″
• Point 11–5 1/4″
• Point 12–5 3/4″
• Point 13–7″
• Point 14–8 3/4″
• Point 15–9 1/2″
• Point 16–9 1/2″
• Point 17–9 1/2″
• Point 18–This is part of the line for the bottom/back edge of the dia­per, mea­sur­ing 9 1/2″ from the cen­ter on one side.

Now con­nect the dots and remem­ber that you’re mak­ing a dia­per, not an atom bomb. This does not have to be super pre­cise. The scary pre­cise parts are all fin­ished now. Feel better?

Step Five: Cut along the lines…

Step Six: Fold the dia­per in half along the cen­ter line. You can trace along the edge of the fin­ished side and then cut, or if you are feel­ing cocky and brave just go ahead and cut the other side out using the fin­ished curve as your guide.

Well, looky there. You did it. Wooo!

But you’re not quite fin­ished yet, sis­ter. Hold onto your pants a minute.

In order for the dia­pers to be absorbent, they’re going to need some lin­ing. This part is easy.

Step Seven: Draw a rec­tan­gle mea­sur­ing 10“x7”. Cut it out and round off the cor­ners so that it resem­bles the above pic­ture. Easy peasy.

I didn’t want to over­whelm you by includ­ing the direc­tions for cut­ting and sewing the dia­per with these instruc­tions, so look for that post in a cou­ple of days. And congratulations–you just drafted your very own pattern!

For those of you with cot­tage indus­tries, you may use this pat­tern to sell dia­pers as long as you pro­vide a link to www.thepeacefulpeacock.com.

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