blanket into nappy covers

I have been spending quite a lot of time this week in my sewing room. Sewing of the necessity sort. You see, I realized recently that we were getting quite low on cloth nappy covers. Over the past eight months I have experimented with many kinds. I started off with a mixture of new and second hand PUL covers, a stash of plastic pilchers that were given to me and some lovely hand knitted woolen soakers.

With this growing baby of mine, most of the PUL and wool covers are now too small. The huge stash of plastic pilchers are almost all completely worn and thrown out. I could have bought more, but I thought this was a good opportunity to be thrifty, and to use what I had. Besides, I didn't really want to buy any more plastic.

So after seeing this idea here, I thought I might try my own version. I had a woolen blanket that had already felted, so I had none of my usual cutting-up-woolen-blanket-guilt.

I used the Chloe toes side snapping cover template, available as a free printable multi-sized pattern. I used the medium size for Violet and found it quite generous.

Definitely not my finest sewing hour. It was more sewing of the experimental, practical kind. Some of them I zig zagged and hemmed, while others had polar fleeced binding attached (cut off one of Daniel's old vests. Hoping he doesn't notice it's absence!)

An extra layer was also added to the inside. Though they would ideally be fitted with snap press studs, I  didn't have any, so velcro was used instead.

And I must say that the trial run over the past few days has been most successful. Still dry on the outside of the cover in the morning. They have really surprised me with their performance.

I do love using breathable natural fibres far more than synthetic ones. Being felted already they are also machine washable. I will lanolize them in the future, but for now they are working remarkably well.

I usually lanolize nappy soakers weekly, by adding special lanoline wool soap or a teaspoon of lanoline to a warm sink of water. I usually soak them for about ten minutes before gently squeezing excess water with a towel. The lanoline helps to repel wetness. I am looking forward to trying the spray on lanoline, which should save quite a bit of time.

Violet in her Sustainable hemp products nappy cover - sadly too small now

Here is an informative article on the benefits and care of wool soakers.

Sustainable Hemp Products is an excellent resource for wool soakers. You can purchase hand knitted ones as well as wool washing products and lanoline spray.

The Byron Life also has a great tutorial for making pull on soakers from a wool jumper.