Some progresss on the newborn stash

While there is still quite a bit to do, I am pleased to have these fifteen newborn fitteds completed. (There are also some other newborn nappies lurking in my sewing desk and in storage, but only a few).

I had/have plans to make mostly snail shell nappies, but found myself paralysed with indecision about the details, so decided to make some little fitteds, something I'm more familiar with. It means there is a good chunk of the stash completed, even if they're not exactly what I originally had in mind.

The ladybird fabric is from a flannelette sheet set that I bought on sale at Target. I used Target flannelette sheets for some of Heather's stash too, and they held up really well, so I hope this new set proves reasonably durable too.

Some of these are a bit wonky, but they should all work for the first little while. All the nappies have two body layers of flannelette and a layer of bamboo fleece in the bum zone, (as newborns, H & H's nappies got very wet at the rear because they spent a lot of time on their backs). There are two lay-in inserts/soakers per nappy, each has two layers of bamboo fleece and one layer of flannelette.

Seven DDNB (red/smaller pattern). I overlocked the first few but it was hard to do curves neatly with the flannelette, so the rest are turned and topstitched.

Opened up, showing the gusset with inserts in place. the gusset is a strip of microfleece sewn around the insert area, with fold over elastic sewn on the free edge. While the FOE is fast to apply, I found it difficult to get the amount of stretch correct. Most of them are too loose (I hope they tighten up with washing - I didn't pre-shrink the FOE). Sewing a casing is more fiddly but more adjustable.

Opened up, showing the two inserts to the side. You can see I've sewn some satin stitching with purple thread - this is to help match up inserts and nappies, since the inserts from different patterns I used look very similar at first glance.

Eight La Di Da. These are bit neater, being sewn after I ironed out the kinks with the DDNB above.

Opened up with inserts tucked in. Rather than a full gusset, I just did a small one under the back edge, to catch those poos that shoot up the back.

Close up of gusset and green colour-coding satin stitching.

Opened up with the inserts to the side.

Cute tags, from a co-op on Diaper Sewing Divas. Possibly overkill for newborn nappies that might be outgrown very quickly, but I think they give a nice finish to the nappies. I already had the size tags.

You can see I chose to use hook and loop rather than snap closures. The intention is to make the nappies easier to use (bleary-eyed night time changes, anyone?) and more intuitive for others, who may not be used to cloth (e.g. midwives, relatives). I hope it works, because the hook tape is a pain to sew!

It's a gamble making smaller newborn nappies (LDD runs smallish), but this baby will be born about three weeks earlier than the last two, so there's a reasonable chance they'll fit her for a few weeks. The next batch, though, will be smalls that adjust down to newborn size, which will definitely fit for longer.