The diaper

After three attempts at taking photos of the diaper I made in three different lighting situations and on three different colored backgrounds, I have determined that I'm not going to get perfect coloring on these. 

This is probably closest to the actual coloring, but the yellow is still too green and the blue/green color on the background (lining fabric) is not green enough. ::Grumble::

If you've been to JoAnn or The Hobby Lobby recently you have probably seen the Babyville products, even Fabric.com carries them now! My mother-in-law decided to see what the hype was about and bought a three pack of PUL each for me and her, and the cute matching fold over elastic and label packets for each of us too! 

I made the sham pocket flannel lined diaper from the Babyville book in a size small slim. I had all of these ideas on what I wanted to make first, combining what I thought were the best parts of each diaper pattern. I decided to follow my own advice though, and do the pattern as is the first time out, with the exception of the added gussets. That breastfed baby poop is scary stuff, I wanted the extra barrier. 

The "soaker" pattern was kind of a pain. It says that you can either serge, zig-zag or turn and top-stitch and since I don't have a serger I decided to go for the second most professional type finishing option. Yeah...the soakers (or what my husband called that maxi-pad type thing) are four layers of flannel and two layers of cotton batting. Hard to turn and top-stitch! And one of the patterns calls for two of these sewn together down the center! I may get brave enough to try it though. 

I have yet to actually use the diaper for more than a photo shoot, which she refrained from soiling it for. I'm curious to try though and see how this works out before I cut into the rest of my PUL. I figure even if this doesn't convert me to full fledged cloth diapering, at the very least I can use it at the beach this summer and save myself a ton of money on those cheap, do-nothing swim diapers. 

Two finishes!

I posted last Monday about entering the Challenge over at Amy's Creative Side. My goal was to finish the dress I started for Caroline, and I'm happy to say I did it! Want proof?

The dress is made from Simplicity 2668, and if you read my previous post about it, you can see what I meant about how huge it is! Though Caroline slightly exceeds the minimum height and weight for the 6 months size, I would not consider this fitting, at all. Which is a real bummer because not only is it adorable, she loves the bright, high-contrast colors. She does nothing but stare at and reach for this dress if it's in sight. I guess we'll try it on again in June, sigh. 

Big accomplishment for me, this was the first item I actually tried to machine sew a zipper in! (If you've been following for a long while, you might remember that I made a Halloween costume with a zipper a year ago. I was actually so nervous about messing it up that I hand stitched the whole thing in!) 

It's not perfect, especially that little gape in the middle there, but it opens and closes all the way, and I'll only get better from here!

And lastly, if you are visiting from Amy's blog you may have seen me comment that if I finished with time, I was going to try my hand at a cloth diaper. I had the time! I think it's so cute, but all of the pictures I took of the parts turned out funky, and I certainly can't show you the lining while the baby is wearing it..so I'll leave you with this adorable photo of chubby baby thighs and a promise that I will get some better pictures and post all about it in a couple days!