sew your own diapers

Well, it's been almost four weeks since my little man was born (after a fairly short 2.5 hour labor, weighing 8.5 lbs)  so I've had some time to try out all of the diapers and covers I made.  This is a review of the Little Starter Cloth Diaper Pattern by Little Comet Tails.

I made newborn (xs) snap-in covers and fitteds.  For the covers I only used one layer of PUL (aka "wipe clean" covers) except for the areas with snaps where I used a second layer for reinforcement.  The gussets keep the pee and poop well contained and since the newborn pattern has a small dip in the front, neither the cover or the fitted diaper touch the umbilical cord area.  One thing I wished I had done was to elasticize the front of the cover (the pattern provides markings for that but I didn't think baby would need it) as this would have made them a lot more snug in that area of his body.  But still, no leaks or anything.  I have been using mostly prefolds from Green Mountain Diapers with these covers (the orange edge ones) as my LO seems to "go" during and after every feeding and I only made half a dozen or so fitteds to try out.  The GMD prefolds fit snuggly inside the cover, though there could be a little more room lengthwise for them, but they work just fine.  I also tried the small Gdiaper flushable inserts with the covers (we were using a lot of petroleum jelly in the beginning and I was afraid it would ruin my hard handiwork) and they fit perfectly inside them.  Overall, I am very pleased with this pattern.  It's easy and very fast to sew, especially when using a single layer of PUL.

The fitted diaper pattern was easy to use and the diapers fit my son well.  The pattern calls for a slightly wider outer layer than the hidden inner or the inner layer but  I used the inner layer pattern for all three diaper layers and serged them together.  As with the covers, I wish I had put in elastic in the front, but they never leaked anyhow.  One thing I would do differently next time would be to take out a quarter inch or so around the wings.  The pattern doesn't call for any modifications to the actual dimensions (between t&t and serging) but I found that the wings were too wide and looked kind of disproportionate to the rest of the diaper.  Another modification I made was to make a contoured snap-in soaker as opposed to the internal soaker instructed in the pattern.  This type of soaker is my personal favorite since it's easier to get clean and dries much faster.

Having only started cloth diapering my older son when he was 18 months old I wasn't sure what system I would prefer with a newborn.  Using prefolds with a PUL cover is definitely the most economical and easiest to clean system but I find that my favorite, for its speed, to put on my son is the fitted diaper with a wool soaker—I use hand knit ones I made from the Curly Purly pattern.  For the next size up I will probably still sew PUL covers because they are very quick to put together and are reliable and then use prefolds with them.  I will still try to sew some fitteds but since free time is so hard to find these days I doubt I'll make enough to depend on.  Plus, my LO is getting big quickly and before I know it he'll have outgrown his newborn stash.

Hope this review helps anyone interested in these patterns.

Thank you for all the information! 

Thanks! This is really helpful for beginner like me