What a Life!

Ben wears cloth diapers. We started out using inexpensive prefolds, but I found them bulky and I didn’t like the wraps I was using. Then I went through an experimentation stage where I sampled many styles of diapers and covers. Eventually I settled on fitted diapers with a short rise in front. In other words, they ride underneath his Buddah belly rather than starting at the waist and falling down to that point which in turn creates a big bulge. Here is a picture I took of him wearing this style soon after I tried them:

Then I designed a pattern that was similar to the one pictured. I treated the purchased ones (new) and my own the same way – used in pefect rotation, washed in the same loads, dried in the same manner (hung on the line in the summer and dried in the dryer when it was too cold). The elastic in the ones I bought, however, didn’t last more than six months. We have white carpet in our basement and if we were down there and I didn’t notice right away that Ben had a dirty diaper (vs. wet), there were problems. It looked kind of like this:

I know – Yuck!

Needless to say, I have since fixed those diapers by sewing the good elastic I used in mine on the outside. They’re serged around the edges and there is no way I’m going to rip that out so the elastic can be inside. My “fix” works okay, but the good elastic is like a rubber band (doesn’t have thread woven around it like regular elastic) and sometimes I see marks on his legs.

So a few months ago, I cut out eight new diapers to sew up for Ben. The only problem was that I didn’t have a chance to sew them up. It’s rather tedious and time consuming, though if everything was set up I would say it only takes about a half hour to make one diaper. The big problem is that when I have the sewing machine out, Ben likes to play with the pedal. With the regular machine, that’s bad enough. With the serger, it’s suicide because pushing the pedal moves the fabric through the machine which includes a knife which cuts off the seam allowance. Not good!

Well, today Steve got Ben to sleep after lunch. Isn’t he cute?

Every time I get film developed, it seems that half of the pictures I took were of Ben sleeping on Steve’s lap. I think it has to do with my feelings relief at the thought of Ben being asleep and how trully cute he is sitting there next to Steve.

Okay, back to the ranch. So Ben was asleep (I did move him to his crib so Steve could study), and I made hay while the sun shined and sewed the soaker and elastic into those diapers I had cut out. I even took a picture to memorialize the event since it was such a big deal for me to actually have an uninterrupted moment to sew.

I got the soakers and elastic sewn into all eight of them while Steve studied and we both listened to the Huskers win their baseball game as well as the #1 slot in the Big 12 going into the Big 12 tournament. Now I just need to find an afternoon when I can set up the serger and finish them. We’ll see how long that takes!