Crafting Log 1

Hey guys! This week I'm just going to be talking about what I've been working on. I have several projects going on at once, and I thought it would be nice to see my progress with each of them documented with a time stamp and my thoughts.

On Monday of this week (15 Jan 2018) I made my first draft of a cloth diaper. I won't get into the pros and cons of cloth diapers vs store-bought diapers, and I'll just state that I've worked with them before, loved them, and intend to use them in the future. The ones I'm making now will be used by a pregnant friend's future baby. These diapers retail for around twenty bucks apiece, and I managed to whip up my first iteration in about four or five hours. I've been slowly amassing the supplies for these for some time now, buying fabric when they're on sale (hooray Black Friday and Christmas specials), and it just so happens that I have quite the stash of elastic from yard sales in summers and second hand craft stores. I do plan to figure up exactly how much I've spent on these and find out what the cost of materials is per diaper.

I found a free pattern online for a pocket cloth diaper (In my experience, these are better than annoying all-in-ones.) here.

That pattern does not come with instructions, but I found a lovely youtube tutorial here.

I watched the video once completely through, then started right in cutting out the pattern. There are a few things I plan to do differently in the future:

1: Iron the PUL before cutting it out.

2: Sew a larger seam allowance especially around the places where I need to attach the elastic.

3: Follow the correct flap pattern. (I accidentally bastardized the single snap row flaps onto the double snap row front. On my now "practice" diaper, there are extra holes and the snaps are a bit off center.)

4: Allow for more overlap where the pocket is created. Right now it does overlap, but by about half an inch. I'll want a little more than an inch overlap, with a wider hem. This will end up using more microfleece, but it will definitely be worth it when reaching through poop to pull out the insert. (lol?)

Insert progress pics for proof that these are handmade:

I bolstered each snap with an extra layer of PUL as per the recommendation of the YouTube lady. They are sturdy now, so I also recommend it.

Template and PUL layer. You put the front snaps on before sewing it together. I'm rather excited about doing several diapers at once, cutting a bunch, putting snaps on several in a row, and then sewing them all up.

This is the easy sewing part. What's cool is that you just go all the way around- the pocket part creates a natural way to turn it inside out.

This is why I needed to leave more seam allowance. It didn't click at first that if you go over the seam, you'll see the elastic when you turn it inside out - but then I understood it's not necessarily that you'd see it, it's that it would create a bulge, and the edge of your diaper won't be smooth.

The finished product!

The pocket is a little crooked, but I'll fix that when having more overlap.

You can see the dots where I poked the awl through before I realized I'd made the wrong flaps. Looking at the pattern, this is 100% a user error. I should have realized I was making a double snap diaper, and cut for the double snap flaps.

But hey! It looks just like a real diaper! (...because it is. I made a diaper. So exciting.)

And also this week, I finished the main part of my first planned pooling project. I used Red Heart Super Saver yarn in Neon Stripes, and did a full sequence.

I had to continuously buy more yarn - I got two skeins at first to try it out, and that got me about half a diamond. So I ordered 15 more skeins, because hey, that's a lot of yarn, right? I ended up ordering another 6 at one point, and would pick up one or two every time I physically went into the store. So, this took roughly 29 or 30 five ounce skeins. I am currently in the process of bordering it with black, with just a simple hdc straight across, three in the corners. Probably at least five times around.

I'll show the finished product in the next Craft Log.

So that's what I've been crafting this week! Thanks for taking the time to read this, feel free to message me with any questions, comments, or concerns you might have!