Fitted nappy

Following on from my previous post, I also made a fitted nappy this week.  This one has a layer of green toweling, some toweling and flannelette inside it, and a layer of microfleece as a stay dry layer for next to baby's skin.  Its also from the wee weka pattern.  

There is no waterproof layer for fitted nappies; they need a cover to go over the top.  They are really absorbent, more so than pockets because there is absorbency all over, rather than just in the middle.  And because you use a fitted with a cover, there are also two layers of elastic to help stop any leaking.  On the downside they take quite a long time to dry because of the all the absorbency in them.

All of my absorbent materials came from re purposed fabric that I already had; the toweling from an old hand towel (don't tell DH), and the flannelette from an old sheet.

I also made a booster for the nappy.  It has the same microfleece on top, and then several layers of toweling underneath.  This booster isn't attached to the nappy.  This way the recipient can place it wherever in the nappy that needs the most absorbency without making drying time even longer.  Additionally she can also use it with other fitteds or even prefolds if she wants to.  

I zigzagged around the booster with a tight stitch to finish it.  Ordinarily I would do the same for the nappy - it makes them a bit bigger, but it is much easier than stitching and turning (remember to elasticate it first though).  

However, since this nappy was a gift, I stitched and turned it and then top stitched around the outside of the nappy.  It all went well until it came to the topstitching.  Despite my best efforts, I didn't manage to catch both sides of the nappy properly.  I should have sewn around the nappy so that all the outside was toweling, and all the inside was microfleece.  However what I actually managed to do was some pull the microfleece over too much so that now I have top stitched microfleece to microfleece rather than to the toweling (I feel like I'm not explaining myself very well).  I seriously contemplated unpicking this and trying it again, and I NEVER unpick.  In the end I decided not too, because I thought the finished product would look worse unpicked and then re sewn than it already did.  In addition to the terrible topstitching issue, the elasticated bits of the nappy are not very tight.  This is a combination of the elastic I used not being very thick and the nappy having several heavy layers.  The stitching over the top didn't help either.

So all in all, I wasn't that happy with the result.  I'm sure that the recipient will like it, and hopefully be able to get a reasonable amount of wear from it, but I am disappointed.  Fortunately there will be other presents for her as well.

Check out the cute little hands here at the bottom.  I often have an eager audience for photos.