Diaper Cloth (cotton birdseye) at Walmart

[DL-Boy]

I was shopping at Walmart Monday night and while checking out the fabric section I stumbled across two packs of "DIAPER CLOTH" - 2 yards each.  They each cost 4.98 and on the label stated the size of the cut fabric was 72x36 inch.  I opened one when I got home and confirmed that when folded in half widthwise, it was 36x36.  Factor in about 1" loss when hemming a 1/2" on all four sides (1/4" turned under twice) which will make it 35x35 before washing.  They are diagonal pattern birdseye.  I can make four single-layer birdseye flats, 35x35" for $9.96 plus a little of my time to cut and hem.

Is that a good price for single layer birdseye flats of that size?  Each 35x35 flat diaper will cost me $2.49 +tx.

[Cruiser 03]

I was shopping at Walmart Monday night and while checking out the fabric section I stumbled across two packs of "DIAPER CLOTH" - 2 yards each.  They each cost 4.98 and on the label stated the size of the cut fabric was 72x36 inch.  I opened one when I got home and confirmed that when folded in half widthwise, it was 36x36.  Factor in about 1" loss when hemming a 1/2" on all four sides (1/4" turned under twice) which will make it 35x35 before washing.  They are diagonal pattern birdseye.  I can make four single-layer birdseye flats, 35x35" for $9.96 plus a little of my time to cut and hem.
Is that a good price for single layer birdseye flats of that size?  Each 35x35 flat diaper will cost me $2.49 +tx.

He'll yes that's a good price!

Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk

[BabyJune]

I find Birdseye to be a bit thin for diapers, even when doubled. I prefer to use diaper flannel. It is only 27" wide, but that's perfect for me. I also use Zorb boosters.

[rusty pins]

I used to find diaper cloth in some fabric stores many years ago, even diamond patterned diaper cloth and it was labeled as "Diaper Cloth".  I haven't see it in years.  Just flannel in prints for quilts, pajamas and the like.  I can only think the lack of Diaper Cloth in fabric stores is for lack of sales and profit.  With everyone these days using disposable diapers, why would people buy diaper cloth and spend all that time making their own diapers unless they have a specialty need to do so.  You can buy adult cloth and disposable diapers in just about any size and thickness you want, and unless you are one of the few with a need and enough time on your hands to make your own diapers, I can't see much of a market and profit for fabric stores to sell diaper cloth.  It's a shame too!

[DL-Boy]

Here is one of the first two flats, measuring about 35"x35", cost $2.49 +tx, each.  I've completed two so far. Once I'm done I'll wash them to remove the sizing.

It's actually the diamond pattern birdseye even though I said yesterday that it was diagonal pattern.

 

1 hour ago, rusty pins said:

 With everyone these days using disposable diapers, why would people buy diaper cloth and spend all that time making their own diapers unless they have a specialty need to do so.  You can buy adult cloth and disposable diapers in just about any size and thickness you want, and unless you are one of the few with a need and enough time on your hands to make your own diapers, I can't see much of a market and profit for fabric stores to sell diaper cloth.  It's a shame too!

The cost of these medium adult birdseye flat diapers was 2.49 each, about 22% of the 11.25 price on AngelFluff.com for buying 4 or more single layer 35x35 birdseye diapers.

[DL-Boy]

I just scored three more packs of the 2 yds diaper material from a different Walmart for $4.97 each, and another spool of white thread.  I will have 10 single layer birdseye diapers when I'm finished.  I figure that rather than making any of them "multi-layer", I'll keep them all single and then I can fold one or two up as stuffers inside a single.  Only the business area of the diaper needs maximum absorbency.  The sides only take incidental wetness from side-sleeping.  If side wetness is an issue I can also double one flat and fold one or two for stuffers, giving a total of 2 layers on the sides and 4-8 layers in the middle depending on how many stuffer diapers and how they are folded.

[Ferix]

Your cloth diapers look fantastic! Great job! Great price too!

 

Another place to look into is Joann's. I've found diaper cloth and all sorts of cute PUL fabric at Joann's. With the right coupons (40-50% off) you can get it cheaper than walmart. They post coupons on their website and if you sign up for text messaging, they send you additional coupons. Also, the diaper fabric and PUL fabric at joann's is on a bolt and not pre-cut.

[DL-Boy]

Thanks for the recommendation @Ferix.

I've got a set of "Rolled Hem" presser feet coming from Amazon tomorrow so I'm going to wait to work on the remaining eight diapers until I get them. The first two diapers required a bit of additional work to fold and pin the hems before I stitched them. The new presser feet will make that step obsolete.

 

[rusty pins]

16 hours ago, DL-Boy said:

 I figure that rather than making any of them "multi-layer", I'll keep them all single and then I can fold one or two up as stuffers inside a single.  Only the business area of the diaper needs maximum absorbency.  The sides only take incidental wetness from side-sleeping.  If side wetness is an issue I can also double one flat and fold one or two for stuffers, giving a total of 2 layers on the sides and 4-8 layers in the middle depending on how many stuffer diapers and how they are folded.

My long time DL friend who was a member here until he passed away 2-1/2 years ago always did just that with his cloth diapers.  Rather than one thick cloth diaper, he had thinner diapers and added smaller baby diapers as inserts so he could adjust the amount of absorbency he wanted if he was away for the day fishing in my boat, or at home where he could change more often.  He always said the biggest benefit was the length of time it took the washed diapers to dry.  One thick diaper takes a long time to dry but multiple cloth baby diapers or layered diapers dry a lot quicker!

[babypb]

....that's some great work there too!!! Alot cheaper than you can purchase adult diapers for sure!!!

[Ferix]

17 hours ago, DL-Boy said:

Thanks for the recommendation @Ferix.

I've got a set of "Rolled Hem" presser feet coming from Amazon tomorrow so I'm going to wait to work on the remaining eight diapers until I get them. The first two diapers required a bit of additional work to fold and pin the hems before I stitched them. The new presser feet will make that step obsolete.

 

Eliminating raw edges can be tough. One of my work arounds is to make the diaper 2 layers, hem 3 sides, then turn inside out (like making a pillow case). I iron in the raw edges on the 4th side inward then hem the last edge so there's no hole. Not as professional looking but its super quick and easy.

[DL-Boy]

7 hours ago, Ferix said:

Eliminating raw edges can be tough. One of my work arounds is to make the diaper 2 layers, hem 3 sides, then turn inside out (like making a pillow case). I iron in the raw edges on the 4th side inward then hem the last edge so there's no hole. Not as professional looking but its super quick and easy.

@Ferix, so technically, rather than hems you're making seams down the three sides, reversing and making a tuck-in seam on the fourth side.

Do you run another stitch along the folded edges after?

Incidentally, with 72" long cuts of fabric, stitching along the lengthwise folded edge first eliminates the need to cut the two 36" segments apart.

[Angela Bauer]

Going back to the 1930's before my mother was born my grandmother made adult gauze diapers by combining 2 or more classic Curity 21x40" gauze diapers. Conventional sewing of gauze is frustrating. Granny and Gramps bought a commercial multi-needle over-lock machine. Granny still uses that machine and has a technician maintain it.

Years ago consumer versions of over-lock machines became available. Those are called sergers. Most of the same stores selling better sewing machines also sell sergers. You might want to consider that approach for Birdseye weave cotton.

 

[Ferix]

14 hours ago, DL-Boy said:

@Ferix, so technically, rather than hems you're making seams down the three sides, reversing and making a tuck-in seam on the fourth side.

Do you run another stitch along the folded edges after?

Incidentally, with 72" long cuts of fabric, stitching along the lengthwise folded edge first eliminates the need to cut the two 36" segments apart.

Self taught seamster so I'm not all up to snuff with the lingo.

 

I didn't find it necesarry to run another stitch across the other 3 seams on my contour diapers I made (They are about 3 years old now), but you could definitely do that to make a uniform look on all four sides. Stitching all 4 sides like that would likely make it difficult/impossible to tell which sides were seamed and which one wasn't because they would all look the same.

[DL-Boy]

40 minutes ago, Ferix said:

Self taught seamster so I'm not all up to snuff with the lingo.

That's cool.  I've had my sewing machine since about 10/24/19, so less than two months.  I'm pretty new at it too although I have used a sewing awl to hem up blue jeans that were too long.  A sewing awl is basically a handle with a chuck and needle with an eye at the point and a channel down the length.  A spool is fastened into the handle that feeds thread.  A standard sewing machine lock-stitch can be made by pulling a long bit of thread through the fabric on the first stitch, then using that thread to feed through each loop you create afterward, thus a lock-stitch.

40 minutes ago, Ferix said:

I didn't find it necesarry to run another stitch across the other 3 seams on my contour diapers I made (They are about 3 years old now), but you could definitely do that to make a uniform look on all four sides. Stitching all 4 sides like that would likely make it difficult/impossible to tell which sides were seamed and which one wasn't because they would all look the same.

I went ahead and cut another 72" section of diaper material in half so I had two 36"x36" cuts.  I got the rolled hem presser feet and chose to use the 6 mm foot (3, 4 and 6 mm).  folded quarter inch over and then over again and fed the double-folded bit onto the foot with the fold in the folder tab.  Made a manually advanced stitch or two, reversed several stitches then proceeded to stitch slowly, double-folding more of the edge as needed, prior to the presser foot.

After completing MOST of the side (the first 1-1.5" at the start of the stitch is unstitched), I turn the fabric around and put the foot on top of the backside of the hem, lining up the needle with the existing stitches, then stitched, reversed, stitched to end and manually advanced through the end where the multiple folds were.

The reversing at the beginning and end of a stitch is supposed to better lock the stitch so it won't unravel.  For more instructional tips, I recommend looking up the videos on YouTube.  I have a Singer 3337 and there are MANY videos on YouTube on how to use it for various stitches.  I've even tried my hand at using the buttonhole foot although I still haven't quite mastered it yet.

[Ferix]

I have quite a few hundred hours working on the sewing machine, making cloth diapers for me and others. I got the basics, just not the lingo.

 

Its standard to reverse the stitch to lock it in for me. I also cut the tail end of the threads after each stitch with my diapers as I do elastic in the legs and waist, as well as sew on some hook and loop fasteners. When there's a lot of stitching, its easy to miss the tails if they aren't cut off right away.

Here's an example of what I've done:

 

[Ferix]

18 hours ago, Angela Bauer said:

Going back to the 1930's before my mother was born my grandmother made adult gauze diapers by combining 2 or more classic Curity 21x40" gauze diapers. Conventional sewing of gauze is frustrating. Granny and Gramps bought a commercial multi-needle over-lock machine. Granny still uses that machine and has a technician maintain it.

Years ago consumer versions of over-lock machines became available. Those are called sergers. Most of the same stores selling better sewing machines also sell sergers. You might want to consider that approach for Birdseye weave cotton.

 

Id love to get a serger, it's just prohibitively expensive! One of these days though... *dreams*

 

I had similar problems when I was making pull-on terry cloth diapers; the fabric just did not hold the stitch. My solution was to do a zigzag stitch on just the inside of the straight stitch, which totally worked. It just took a lot more time at the sewing machine.

[DL-Boy]

4 hours ago, Ferix said:

Here's an example of what I've done:

 

Ok, now you've done it...  those photos make me feel grossly inadequate! 

Gotta push myself to try other things now. Do you use a pattern or just make things up as you go?

[Ferix]

7 hours ago, DL-Boy said:

Ok, now you've done it...  those photos make me feel grossly inadequate! 

Gotta push myself to try other things now. Do you use a pattern or just make things up as you go?

I got to where I am at in small steps, exactly like how you are starting. It takes a lot of experimenting and mistakes to make some really cool stuff.

 

I do use a patterns for my cloth diapers, which I made myself. The contour pattern is loosely based off of my favorite disposables. My pull-on diaper pattern was made free hand.  The process involves cutting it out to what I think will work, pinning it on, then making adjustments. Usually my first couple runs are off so I end up making a few test runs before I get it right. I'll buy bed sheets from thrift stores to make patterns and craft a practice run so I'm not wasting nice fabric if I make a mistake.

 

Here's the pattern for my large sized cloth diaper and diaper core:

[DL-Boy]

On 12/19/2019 at 11:37 AM, Angela Bauer said:

Going back to the 1930's before my mother was born my grandmother made adult gauze diapers by combining 2 or more classic Curity 21x40" gauze diapers. Conventional sewing of gauze is frustrating. Granny and Gramps bought a commercial multi-needle over-lock machine. Granny still uses that machine and has a technician maintain it.

Years ago consumer versions of over-lock machines became available. Those are called sergers. Most of the same stores selling better sewing machines also sell sergers. You might want to consider that approach for Birdseye weave cotton.

Although the Singer Simple 3337 is a very modest multi-stitch machine, it does have one stitch that is a relatively adequate substitute for a serger.  Its a combination of a straight stitch and a zigzag stitch in one.  My machine will also accept a double-needle and has two spool pins so it's even possible to use two top-threads with the bottom bobbin thread.

[Angela Bauer]

1 hour ago, DL-Boy said:

Although the Singer Simple 3337 is a very modest multi-stitch machine, it does have one stitch that is a relatively adequate substitute for a serger.  Its a combination of a straight stitch and a zigzag stitch in one.  My machine will also accept a double-needle and has two spool pins so it's even possible to use two top-threads with the bottom bobbin thread.

It well could be a machine like that could substitute for a serger.

[DL-Boy]

I had the first trial run last night of some birdseye diapers.  I took the first six that I had completed and washed them in my front-loader with about 8 oz of vinegar in the prewash reservoir and my regular liquid detergent in the wash reservoir.  They came out very puffed up after I dried them.  Those diamond shaped patterns were no longer flat but puffed out.

I laid one diaper flat on my bed and placed a second one on top, making sure they were squared up.  I took a third one and folded it twice lengthwise so it was 4 layers thick.  I laid that down the middle of the other two from end-to-end.  I folded left and right sides of the doubled diaper over the stuffer panel and pulled the back wings out to a diagonal while holding the fold at about 1/3 way from the front (rear wing is 2/3 of length, front straight part is 1/3 length).

I pulled the diaper down over edge of the bed and sat on it, pulling the front up to my waist and one back corner around my waist to the front.  I spread open the front panel a little to meet the back corner and pinned it.  I repeated the process on the other side.  I added 2 more pins for the leg holes to keep them snug.  I re-tightened the pins on the waist for a more snug fit.

Then I pulled on my 20+ year old pair of "rubber-over-nylon weave" waterproof pants and over that my pair of LeakMaster PUL pants.  I've been in the diaper since last night around 12:30 am and it's now 12:15 pm and although a bit wet (2 voids I know of), it still doesn't feel overly saturated and no leaks from the doubled waterproof pants (yet).

 

UPDATE: I just discovered that birdseye gives no perception of being "too-wet" until it's totally saturated and cannot hold anymore.  On my third void I noticed a bit of airy coolness in the right side of my PUL pants - went to the bathroom and pulled down the LeakMasters which had a little wetness - the rubber on nylon was totally saturated, inside and out, and the 2-6-2 birdseye (essentially equivalent to a 2-6-2 prefold) was dripping from everywhere (no dry fabric anywhere).

Findings: Two voids max for me in a 3-birdseye setup.

[WetDad]

These are the things you have to discover about cloth. Capacity is a big one, but cloth is very consistent. To get more capacity, just add more layers. Once you find pants that fit right, leaks will be a thing of the past,too.

[WBxx]

On 12/17/2019 at 1:25 AM, DL-Boy said:

I was shopping at Walmart Monday night and while checking out the fabric section I stumbled across two packs of "DIAPER CLOTH" - 2 yards each.  They each cost 4.98 and on the label stated the size of the cut fabric was 72x36 inch.  I opened one when I got home and confirmed that when folded in half widthwise, it was 36x36.  Factor in about 1" loss when hemming a 1/2" on all four sides (1/4" turned under twice) which will make it 35x35 before washing.  They are diagonal pattern birdseye.  I can make four single-layer birdseye flats, 35x35" for $9.96 plus a little of my time to cut and hem.

Is that a good price for single layer birdseye flats of that size?  Each 35x35 flat diaper will cost me $2.49 +tx.

I’d be tempted to leave the 72x36 diaper cloths as they are.  Then, when preparing to put on, simply fold the cloth back on itself creating double layer 36x36 diapers.

[DL-Boy]

26 minutes ago, WBxx said:

I’d be tempted to leave the 72x36 diaper cloths as they are.  Then, when preparing to put on, simply fold the cloth back on itself creating double layer 36x36 diapers.

They still need to be hemmed though because they have raw edges that unravel quickly, leaving threads everywhere.  The 72x36 would work but they'd still need four separate hemmed edges.

I bought a set of "Rolled Hem Presser Feet"  off Amazon for $6.99 that includes a 3mm, 4mm and 6mm foot.  Not quite as automatic as I thought it would be but once it's loaded with the rolled fabric, I just have to stop periodically to roll over more fabric prior to it going into the roller on the foot.  Saved me the tedium and pain of pinning and unpinning the fabric (pain from the occasional accidental pricked finger).