These past several months, I have found myself asking a ton of people for advice on baby supplies - friends, acquaintances, even strangers at the store! Commonly, I hear the only burp cloth worth using is the traditional cloth diaper. Today there are so many varieties and designs, but a lot of the cute ones have little to no absorbency. After doing a little searching, I realized it's true and decided to go with the standard white prefold diaper. Here's a quick way to pretty them up a bit!
Supplies
Prefold cloth diapers (I found a 10 pack at Target)
Fabric
Rotary cutter/scissors and cutting mat
Ruler
Ironing board/iron
Sewing machine & thread
Sewing machine & thread
Instructions
Before you start, wash all fabric and cloth diapers to pre-shrink everything. I also ironed everything before cutting.
Next, measure the center absorbent part of the diaper. This is where your accent fabric will go. You will need to cut the fabric to be 1" longer than the diaper to allow for 1/2" seams on all sides. My diaper measured 18" so my fabric was cut to 6" wide x 19" long.
Iron a 1/2" hem all the way around all four sides of fabric.
Pin the fabric to the diaper.
Stitch around all four sides of the fabric, as close to the edge of the fabric as you can evenly sew. The absorbent rectangle makes can make it tricky to sew a straight line if you're too close to the edge.
Ta-da! Now you have a very absorbent burp cloth with a pretty little accent!
Any other words of wisdom for this mommy-to-be?
+, Lauren Aiken
Very cute, Lauren! All of your adorable baby stuff is giving me baby fever-- but we will wait a few more years :) I'm sure you're getting so excited!
ReplyDeleteThese are super cute! I wish I would have made these before Bradli was born. Unfortunately she spit up a TON- it didn't matter how much I burped her or what I ate. It was just her thing. Next baby I'm totally doing this.
ReplyDeleteMy only suggestion would be to boil the cloth diapers first, or wash them five or six times in hot water without detergent. You washed yours and it will definitely help with the absorbency, but just like with cloth diapering, the most absorbency happens after five or six hot washes ("stripping"). They usually shrink up to 33%, so it may make the actual fabric piece you put on a little smaller.
But, babies don't spit up as much as they pee. So stripping isn't necessarily a must for this type of project!
Adorable! What a great little project and way to add color and pattern to something that is often so ordinary. You're one crafty mama!
ReplyDelete