Sunday, April 5, 2009

Refashioning for a cloth-diapered bottom

Our newborn baby, Lucy, has an amazing wardrobe full of tons of wonderful hand-me-downs and gifts.  At first, I thought it was far more clothes than one baby could ever use.  But then I discovered something--cloth diapering requires a completely different type of clothing than disposables.  We're using cloth diapers and wool diaper covers.  From the beginning, we struggled with wet clothing.  It seemed like every time we changed her diaper, we had to change her whole outfit.  It was exhausting, for us and for her.

Over time, we've figured some things out.  For example, if the clothing is tight against the diaper cover, it's more likely to get wet.  This--plus the fact that we wanted to use the wool longies I've been making as diaper covers--made her drawers-full of onesies nearly useless.  We found that we were always digging through the drawers trying to find long-sleeved shirts that didn't snap, so we could pair them with her longies or another wool cover and not have it get wet.  We also found that many of the snap- or zipper-legged outfits we'd been given just didn't fit over that big cloth-diapered bottom.   We wanted long tops or wide dresses.

As nice as her clothing was, it was going to be wasted sitting in the drawer.  I finally decided that I'd try to refashion some of them to suit her diaper needs.  It was scary cutting into perfectly good clothing!  But I worked up the nerve, said a silent apology to the person who'd given her this lovely outfit, pulled out my rotary cutter, and sliced away.  I added some rick-rac to finish it off, and voila!  A long top to cover her belly without interfering with her diaper cover!  Can't wait to try the next one...

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