Cloth diaper trial pattern #1

One of my pregnant friends notified me of a free cloth diaper pattern available online from Finnish sewing magazine Ottobre. Here's the link to the pattern.

It sewed up pretty easily and I like the design.

I used white flannel inherited from my mother-in-law's fabric collection. There are about 7 yards, so I should have plenty to make a sizable diaper inventory. I even used the flannel for all the layers of the soaker pad - but next time I'll mix in some old towels and old t-shirts for a few of the layers to recycle our rags and extend the flannel. Anything absorbent will work.

Here is a cool feature - pockets to fold over the loop side of the velcro to prevent snags while washing.

I didn't follow the directions, so my diapers are a little different than the pattern intended. The main difference is I sewed the outer and inner sides of the body of the diaper together and then turned it right-side-out so the seams were hidden inside instead of serging the outer edges. Serging would have been faster, but I don't have my machine up and running.

I also made a casing for the elastic instead of zig-zag sewing it directly onto the inner side of the diaper.

Another difference is that I made the soaker pad independent of the diaper and tacked only the top and bottom edges to the diaper body to facilitate drying. It would be ideal to make the soaker pad completely removable (with snaps or a pocket, etc) but I'll try that out on future versions.

I'm pretty happy with how these first versions turned out. I think they are definitely worth it to make myself. Unfortunately, I haven't tried it out on a real baby yet - hopefully it works well.