Our cloth diapering system

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My friend Jessie and I have been discussing cloth diaper sewing on her blog. She’s expecting a new little girl soon via adoption, and she’s trying to find last-minute things to do while she waits. She mentioned that she’s sewn some cloth diapers, and the discussion began.

We really have an odd assortment of diapers for our cloth diaper stash. I have two dozen (I think) Rita’s Rump Pocket diapers (RRP), several dozen prefolds of varying weights, a variety of fitted diapers, and a couple covers that were given to me.

We used some Mama Bird pocket diapers when C was a newborn. I loved those, but he grew out of them and since I had the RRP diapers, I didn’t sew any Mama Bird ones in bigger sizes. They were my favorites, but they’re not one-size-fits-most like the RRP diapers are.

The Rita’s Rump Pockets all have fleece on the outside and flannel on the inside. There are four different kinds of fleece that I used. Two were given to me, one from Walmart, and one from our local fabric store, Mary Jo’s. The thicker fleece is more waterproof, but not drastically so. They worked fine at first leak-wise, but now that C is bigger we need more than just one layer of fleece. We were stuffing them with homemade doublers – a cheap washcloth folded in thirds and encased in a “pillowcase” of flannel. Those work fine just like that for shorter periods during the day. Then we added some waterproof pieces – an old waterproof crib mattress pad cut into pieces slightly larger than the washcloth doublers. I zig-zagged around the edges of the mattress pad sections just to keep the layers together better.

I’ve also been using the fitted diapers with the fleece covers I sewed when S was tiny. I used the instructions from diapersewing.com. They are all two layers of fleece, and work pretty well at containing leaks. For nights I like to add another waterproof layer though. We might not really need it but the waterproof layer is really thin and doesn’t add bulk, and I like the extra peace of mind.

We also have quite a few contour diapers. The thin ones we use to stuff the RRP diapers, and the thicker ones we use inside the fleece covers.

We still wash a load of diapers every 2-3 days, but that’s because our diaper pail is really small. If we had to, we could probably go a good 5 days between diaper washing.