Cloth Pull-Ups Take One

Okay, before I begin there are a few things you need to know:

-I am not a seamstress. I do not have stellar sewing skills.

-My sewing machine is not a modern model. It was a generous gift from my Mother-In-Law and she's had it since Paul was a kid.

-My purpose in doing this is to save $$. I was not making this so it'd look cute. The fashion police are not going to show up at my house in the middle of the night to inspect the style of my son's pull-ups while he sleeps.

-If you're reading this and you are agasp at my sewing or even my idea of doing this, please move on. I am chronicling my attempts, not putting this online for you to pick apart and criticize me. If you have a better idea or a better method I could use, please share. But negative Nellys, please move on to the next blog.

Okay, without further adieu, here's what I did.

The reason I started this in the first place is because I have a boy who does things on his own time. He'll be able to wake up and go to the bathroom when he's ready. I could offer him the world, but he'll do things on his own time. I decided that I'm sick of buying disposable pull ups and I'd rather have a cloth option that is washable. I am also not into shelling out the big bucks for cloth diapers online when I can just make my own. I did some googling, and found things likethis online. After reading this, I began to think about what materials I had at home.

I took 2 pair of underwear and a generic version of a Sham Wow. Yes, a Sham Wow. Only it isn't called a Sham Wow because we got it at the flea market for $1.00. You don't know what a Sham Wow is? Oh, then let me remind you...

Click HERE

Anyway, I thought of the Sham Wow because it's super absorbent. The idea is not to soak the bed, right?

So here are the pictures of the materials:

After that, I cut the underwear on the sides. So I could layer the Sham Wow between the two pairs of undies and sew them together with a seam. When I cut them apart and laid them out, they looked like this:

I only had a few pins, but I pinned down the undies, and used a sharpie to trace the undies onto the Sham Wow. Then I cutout the Sham Wow, and pieced it together between the two pair of undies. When it was all pinned together, it looked like this:

Then I sewed. I ended up using a large straight stitch. I tried a fancy zig zag, but I think the age of my sewing machine couldn't handle doing it through three layers of material. Here are some pictures of all the sewing:

This is what it looked like when I sewed the seams together on the sides:

So here's the verdict. The undies lost their stretchiness (is that a word?) when I layered them with the sham wow. Simply put, they were too small. I like the idea of using undies because it's a fool proof pattern. I ended up taking this apart at the seams on the side and putting them inside his undies to use as an absorbent pad to check the absorbency. It was good, but I think a plastic liner will help. I am going to purchase some bigger boys' undies (maybe on the cheap at the $1 store), another generic Sham Wow (they have them at Winn Dixie for $1) and also a cheap felt backed plastic table cloth. I am going to layer it all together and sew that way. Instead of sewing the seams shut on the side, I am going to make velcro closures of some kind. I am looking forward to making this work for us!