Making Mama Cloth

Around the time I chose to begin using mama cloth, or reusable cloth menstrual pads - I got a refund from an Etsyian that left me with enough money to buy some from . . . more Etsyians. Knowing I planned to have at least two more children I also made sure to buy a couple of post-partum pads. Along with the many things I felt I didn't have enough of to be fully prepared for the new baby was post-partum pads. Only this time I didn't have a sizable refund hanging out in my Paypal account. I was going to have to make them myself.

Find a free pattern for these that made great sense wasn't as easy as I'd hoped for.

I found a template via this pin and this page.

Had the hubs print out the pattern and then I cut out a template.

I pulled out some flannel, most of which was in 1/4 yard cuts, folded it over so that I shouldn't be cutting in the center of the fabric and would also end up with 4 layers.

Then placed the template on top of the fabric making sure to position the template in a way that would allow me to still use even less of the fabric

 and cut them to match the template.

When I revisited the source site from which I'd gotten my template I realized that the directions weren't as detailed as I felt I was going to need.

I made sure to take a good look at the picture of that source posters finished pads but still was feeling I'd need more guidance.

Then I remembered that a week earlier I'd printed out this pattern, that I'd found on Pintrest, at grandma's house.

As it turned out I really needed two templates. One that included the wings and one for the center piece.

With a bit of trial and error I figured out what I felt was the best way for me to do this.

I'd already cut the portions with the wings. I still needed to cut the centers

and the PUL layer.

Once that was done I was ready to get sewing.

Sew your winged pieces together with right sides facing

 - make sure to leave a gap someplace that you can flip the piece inside out.

Once you've flipped the piece inside out, top stitch all along the edges and close up the hole you left by folding under the pieces and top stitching over that as well.

I felt that to get the better result out of how you made the center was a matter of layering.

I got my uppermost layer ready first.

Fold it over

and cut a slit in the center so that you will be able to flip the entire piece around in a few minutes.

Now the layering can begin:

PUL,

the fabric you intend to have showing,

and the fabric for your base.

Top stitch all around the edges of this stack.

As always I like to stitch as close to the edge as I dare.

Then pull the layers with the PUL and the fabric you intended to have showing through the hole you cut in what will be your base layer.

This is what the part you will have showing should look like.

This is what the bottom of that same piece should look like.

Now center this piece onto your winged piece and zig zag stitch it into place.

The above photo was try number three.

This is try number two.

And try number one.

You can see that with a little practice you can learn a lot and make some noticeable improvements.

All  you really have left to do is to add your snaps and then go wash these before you use them!

Big Girl Panties

My little lamb has grown up so fast. Potty training had been going on for quite a while. I started to slowly introduce her to the potty around 18 months old. Some people seem to take a much harder nosed approach to potty training than I did. I really didn't want to discourage or rush her so we just started very slowly.

Very slowly got even slower when in the very very beginning of my pregnancy I was in a four-wheeling accident where I was thrown off the bike and hurt my wrist. My in-laws, of course, banned me from four-wheeling, but I already knew there would have to be no more of that until I'd had our next little lamb.

I did what I could to keep taking her to the potty despite the extreme pain in my wrist and urged my husband to sprint with her to the potty whenever he was around and I saw her make the poop face.

When she decided that she was ready to go whole hog on potty training it seemed to happen at once. She began taking off her diapers and occasionally would pee in the floor. This progressed to frequently telling me, "poop."

Now seems like a good time to let you all know the motivator we've been using in potty training, Anna's cookies. My father brought her some quite some time ago and she fell in love with them. He now sends us semi-regular shipments or brings copious amounts of them with him to make sure she has a stash of what we call, "grandpa cookies."

As soon as we saw we were getting someplace with potty training we told our little one that in the event she tells us that she needs to poop, we take her to the bathroom, and she actually poops - she could have three cookies. When she tells us, "poop", and only pees (she doesn't yet realize to tell us "pee-pee") she gets two cookies. When we take her ourselves and she pees or poops she gets one cookie.

This system generally works out really well. She did, of course, pick up that frequently after being in the bathroom she'd get cookies so occasionally she would say she needed to go, sit on the toilet for a bit, not do anything, and then tell you she should get a cookie. Sorry kiddo, that's not our deal.

Months before she decided she was "all in" on potty training I picked up some flannel to work on some training pants for her. She was really excited about the fabric I'd picked out. Big girl underpants seemed like a great motivator for potty training and the time was now upon me to finally make them.

First I found myself a tutorial - of course it came from Pintrest. I actually contacted the girl who wrote the tutorial asking if I sent her all of teh items needed to make these if she would make some at a discounted rate - her first response was that obviously it sounded like I could sew and she showed me the tutorial.

I accidentally bought the wrong sort of training pants as my base (they were plastic) so it took a while longer for me to get around to getting the correct ones. I was 30 weeks pregnant and panicking so I asked once more if she could help me but got no response.

Amazon had the second best price for a three pack of plain white Gerber training pants but sadly they were beat out by WalMart. Not in any real position to spend extra money I bought three packs of the underpants from WalMart.

Much like you will need to do with a lot of projects you need a template and this is one of those instances where you're going to need to create it yourself. In the source post for the info I was using she used wax paper, which I don't tend to keep around the house.

Trace the seams of the section of underpants that are reinforced.

Here is the template I ended up with.

Much like the original poster, I wanted to make certain I didn't mix up the front with the back of the template so I chose to label it.

Now use your template

to cut 4 layers of flannel and 1 layer of PUL.

The original poster said that the next step was to pin flannel in place inside the underpants

and sew them down. She used a zig zag stitch much like I like to do with this sort of thing. But it never said how many layers of your flannel to use. I did two layers of PUL inside and on the outside from bottom to top was PUL, flannel, and then flannel.

My first template, as you can see, ended up not really being dead on with the seams. Which proved to be a big deal after I sewed everything down.

If this happens to you just do what I did and force yourself to put on your own big kid pants, remove the wonky seams,

redo your template, and begin again.

Mine aren't 100% perfect but they still came out pretty well.

Now I just have to wait until the little lamb is really ready for these.

Must Dash For Girls

After watching me work on her brothers Must Dash quilt I watched my little lamb spend the next few days running around holding my mustache template up to her face and talking about mustaches.

It seemed only fair to make her one too.

This pattern is too too much fun!

Must Dash Quilt

Nearing the end of my second trimester and entirely through my third trimester of my pregnancy I became worried and obsessed with finishing my sons nursery before my due date. This was something I didn't manage to accomplish to my satisfaction.

My pal Sweety Darlin remarked at one point that my son would never notice, know, or care that his nursery was finished. Right as she was, I remained a woman possessed. Now that he's here I've calmed way down and very few of the unfinished nursery items bother me.

Two weeks into happily co-sleeping with our newest addition I realized that I actually had months until it mattered how finished it was.

Once his umbilical cord came off I was happy that now tummy time could begin. I'd already seen this quilt on Pinterest but now I had that "my-son-must-have-this" feeling. So I set to work.

I had my husband print out the template from the source post and bring it home.

Began digging through my fabric to see what I thought might best suit this project.

Hit up WalMart and checked their fat quarters, took a picture of the ones I was considering, texting them to a friend and asking her opinion.

Going to JoAnns after I was once again unable to get someone to help me at the WalMart fabric counter. Get more fabric. Take pictures. Load them to instagram.

I had my husband cut fat quarters off of the half-yards I'd bought at JoAnns.

Then I cut the 10" blocks off as instructed.

Create a mustache template using some leftover cardboard. Cut myself with my rotary cutter. Bleed on the paper print out. Post the whole shenanigan to Instagram. Soldier on like a boss.

Cut the mustaches.

Cut out some mustache shaped fusible webbing. This I didn't do as well as I'd hoped so I ended up fusing the webbing to the mustache and then cutting off the excess.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the mustaches with the fusible webbing on the backs to fuse to my blocks.

I was able to cut all my template, the mustaches, the webbing, and sew the mustaches onto the blocks all in the same day.

Now to begin laying out blocks and figure out the most appealing configuration for the blocks.

Sew them together.

I chose to get more of this adorable mustache fabric from JoAnns to use on the back of the quilt. I hope to have this finished soon.

Meanwhile I'll still making other quilt tops.

Fully Quilted I-Spy Book

My I-Spy quilt craziness and obsession with quiet books has collided.

My husband and I had a double date approaching fast and I wanted something that might help keep my little girl appropriately occupied while we were out.

I have a couple other books partially put together that I'm hoping to have done very soon.

Make sure to leave a comment to let me know if you're interested in my posting a tutorial.

Pretty Much Pintesting - Sewing An XXL Wet Bag

Newborns need a diaper change every 2 hours. Changing a cloth diaper every 2 hours means you're going to end your day with a lot of diapers that need someplace to go. I've had enough issue getting a full days worth of my little lambs diapers fitting into the wet bag I have so I knew I needed something larger.

With the full intention of using this bag for my daughter until my son got here (because having only one wet bag for cloth diapers really wasn't cutting it) I needed to get to work.

Today's post is based on this pin and the information found here. I pretty much followed the same pattern and made a couple of adjustments to make this suit my needs.

I like wetbags because you can use them for more than just cloth diapering.  Take them to the pool for wet clothing and towels.  Maybe you have a little one who is potty training.  This would be a handy thing to have in the diaper bag for any accidents.  Much cuter than a plastic grocery bag, don’t you think?  This wetbag ends up being 9” x 12” and will fit about 3 large cloth diapers, but you can certainly adjust the sizes to make a larger bag.

To start, you’ll need the following materials:

*Two pieces 10” x 12.5” cotton fabric

*One 4” x 14” strip of cotton fabric

*Two pieces 10” x 12” PUL (polyurethane laminated fabric)

*9” zipper

*matching thread

*I read that polyester thread prevents wicking (leaking of moisture in the bag), so I usually use that if I have it.

*baby powder or tissue paper

With shiny side of the PUL up, lay your zipper on top of a short side. 

Place on of the cotton pieces of fabric on top of that, ride side of the fabric touching the zipper.

Pin together.

 Using your zipper foot, sew along the side of the zipper, as close to the zipper as you can.  

Turn both layers over and make the cotton and the PUL even along the sides and bottom.  

Topstitch closely to the zipper.

Before you, Repeat above steps for the other side of the zipper using the remaining outer and PUL pieces of fabric. I stopped to make the straps. Because my bag was so much bigger I was  going to need 2 straps to properly distribute the weight of the bag.

Set the bag aside for now.

Let’s make the straps.

 Fold the 5” x 14” strip in half

 and sew 1/4” seam along the long side.

 Then I sewed along the top of one of the edges.

Turn right side out and topstitch along both long sides.

Your bag no longer needs to set off to the side

Pin the straps in your sandwich of, PUL/ zipper/ straps/ cotton fabric. Make sure the straps are inside the bag. To make certain I caught the straps I left a little extra of the strap peeking out of the wrong side where I would be sewing.

Take the two outer cotton layers and line up as evenly as you can, right sides together.  So your PUL is pulled up and out of the way.  Sew 1/4” seam down each side, making sure to catch the zipper at the top and also the handle that you pinned in.   

 Leave the bottom open.  

Now take the two PUL layers and also line them up as evenly as possible, shiny sides together.

Leave the bag how it is in the above picture.

So the zipper is on the inside, and the cotton layers are still showing the wrong side.  The PUL and the cotton layers are NOT connected at all besides at the zipper.  Sew along all  3 sides of the PUL, leaving the zipper side open.  Since you are sewing on the non-shiny sides, your machine should work fine on this part without tissue paper or baby powder.  

Turn the bag right side out by pulling the cotton layer down over the PUL layer tuck the bottom of the cotton layers and iron. Topstitch closed. I actually didn't bother to stitch the PUL to the cotton. I left it loose.

Right when I was about to sew the end of my bag shut I noticed there was a cut in the fabric.

I fixed it by placing a scrap of the same fabric inside the bag. Making sure that I only had those two layers of fabric before I began sewing.

And then zig zag stitched over the problem.

Now to add snaps to those handles.

100% new to using a press and applying Kam Snaps and 100% disinterested in wasting time or money I went to YouTube to find an instructional video. This is the one I chose to use and it was everything I needed to know about properly using my new crafting toy.

I was careful to do my best to line the snaps up so they should be placed in the same spot on each strap.

Once you have the snaps on go hang the bag from wherever you're going to need it for now. I tend to hang the wet bag from the crib so I did. As you can see my plan to make a massive wet bag was quite the success. Now my only worry is that it's too large.

If your bag turns out to be too large don't forget that wet bags have tons of other uses. For instance this is a great size for holding wet swimsuits and beach things.