Friday, June 18, 2010

Wool Interlock Soakers

After reading up on the subject, I decided that cloth diapers would be the way to go for this baby. We are not doing as well financially this year and I thought cloth diapers would go a long way to save some money. I started googling and reading all I could about their construction and came across this blog http://katrinassqs.blogspot.com/2007/10/free-soaker-pattern.html
for a free soaker pattern.

I then asked around at sewingmamas, another great forum,
http://www.sewingmamas.com/b/forumdisplay.php?f=6
and some mamas were nice enough to let me purchase some wool from them to try these out.

Now soakers are what you put over cloth diapers to help contain everything. Supposedly they are very good for hot weather because they let the baby's skin breathe through the natural wool. I sure hope so, because FL is not know for our cool weather! So here are my first attempts sewn with the smallest pattern from the download.

For the first one(this is the back side), I used a kumquat knit for the lap tee(ottobre 5/2006, modified) and some nice chocolate interlock for the bands of the soaker. This was also my first attempt at dying wool. I used dylon dye and although I like the color, the red really didn't come out as deep as I wanted.

The next day I decided to do something girly. I have had this cupcake fabric sitting on my shelves for a little while. Not sure why, I think I just had to have it because it was so sweet! Another ottobre lap tee and this time I had some scraps from another mama that were already dyed. Made the project much less time consuming! I also had some predyed infant prefold lying around that I purchased from another mama, so I decided to spiffy one up a bit! I cut out a layer of flannel and the knit fabric, serged them together and then stitched them down the middle of the prefold. I decided the prefold was a little too long in the rise, so I rotaried the top and bottom and serged them with matching thread. Easy peasy and cute too!

The next try was with some of my favorite Mighty Mouse fabric. I just loved Mighty Mouse when I was a kid. Same concept as above, lap tee, embellished prefold and wool soaker.

This one is just a lap tee and soaker. However, when I did the red this time I used koolaid for dye. It came out a lot brighter than the first try, but not very deep red, more of a cherry. I am beginning to see that this dying business takes a lot of trial and error!

Overall I don't think I did too badly for my first attempts at wool. The soakers go together well with a serger and really don't take that much fabric or time to sew up. The most time consuming steps are the dying of the wool and the applique.

I can't wait to see them on a fluffy butt! Lots more of these still left to do!

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