Made my own fitted cloth diaper

I don't know if I ever wore cloth diapers as a kid, but I've always been curious about them.

For ease of use/hiding I've always had disposable adult diapers, but recently decided to try cloth for fun. I was all set and ready to go until I saw the price. $40 for a fitted diaper. Too much!

So I started googling "adult cloth diaper pattern" and came up with this great site.

I printed the pattern, taped it together, measured how much material I would need, bought supplies and got to work.

Took me four hours to cut the pattern, figure out how to use the sewing machine (thanks youtube), troubleshoot and finally sew the last stitch, but I did it, and here's the result.





I didn't have time to test them out super well, but the 10 minutes I wore them they were super comfortable. Even with the soaker in there (which makes it about 10 layers) it's not silly thick. Fit is a lot like the Attends Slip Active, with long back wings that kind of hug your hips.

I bought five metres of one metre wide material, which gave me enough for one diaper and one soaker. I probably could have gone with four metres based on the leftovers.

In terms of cost, it was a bit more than the $40 I saw online for a similar diaper. So a fail in terms of that, but a win in terms of feeling good for doing something myself, especially since the most sewing I had done prior to this was hemming a pant leg (badly).

If I did it again, I bet I could probably make one in two hours, now that I know the sewing machine mojo . . . I could probably also make it a lot more pretty.

A fun project for anyone with some time.

Looking forward to trying these our properly tomorrow.

Good job. It's not always cheaper to do it yourself, but you learned something. I always feel good after making something. Who knows your diaper may be more absorbent than the one off line.

What kind of material did you use as that might be important. Cloth diapers have a different material on the inside from the outside. The pee should wick into the middle and be held by the middle material, or so goes the theory. Anyway, you did a lot better than I could have.

I just used diaper flannel the whole way through. I didn't want to seem too knowledgable to the nice lady who was helping me find the materials at the store. I'm sure she never even assumed I was buying all of this for my own diapers, but just in case I played a bit dumb.

Eriksrud said:

(homemade cloth diaper)

Click to expand...

Looks great! And welcome to Cloth Land, too. I wear a mixture of cloth and disposables, but cloth prefolds are my favorites. I've also designed a few cloth diapers, but my sewing skills are super awful, so I've been hiring a seamstress to turn my flimsy prototypes into the Real Deal. That's been fun.

There are a couple of ADISC groups you should join. One is for people who design/make their own cloth diapers, and the other is for all cloth-wearers.

Funny - I always felt the same way, until I did the same you just did (even found the same webpage!) and made these from this post:
Finally I've made my first cloth diaper. These were the KCK PullOnOff with snaps, a pocket diaper (exterior with PUL, interior with fleece).

I got some leaks from those every now and then, specially where the PUL is broken for snaps/velcro, so then I wanted to try a fitted diaper, and I made these:

Which I combine with some rubber pants - No leaks so far

I also added the soakers I mostly use. So the 2 fitted diapers on the top right are based on KCK, the top one has 3 layers: velour-fleece-jersey, and the bottom with just 2: velour-fleece.
The soakers are:
1. Microfiber dishcloths (cheap and absorbent)
2. Microfiber towel shaped as a diaper (I wouldn't do that again.. dishcloths are way more worth it). It's the long one, as it uses the same pattern as the fitted but without any elastics that make it smaller.
3. Cotton piece sewn together (that dark blue thing on the bottom)

Those look really nice. Mine is pretty rough if I'm honest. Especially now after the first use/wash.

I wasn't as careful as I should have been in terms of making sure the soaker was as tacked to the inner layer. So a few layers got bunched up in the wash. It fixed itself ok when I shook it out. But I'll have to run that part of the diaper through the sewing machine again.

Also, I thought it would be more comfortable to put the loop on the wings and the hook on the front. Big mistake. The hook needs to be totally covered when you wash it, or it'll fill up with every loose fiber in the washing machine.

Thankfully that's easy enough to fix.

Finally, in terms of wearing, it was a funny experience. Very comfy. I was surprised how nice it felt even when wet (I was expecting the diaper equivalent of a wet tee shirt). They held a lot too, BUT one thing that did take me by surprise was how badly they leaked when they did leak.

A disposable, from my experience, will start to feel really wet before they're about to leak, and you'll get a little trickle...but the cloth didn't have any of that. It just let go, and overcame the plastic pants.

Next time I'm most definitely wearing the extra soaker I made, and will also have to pay closer attention to how wet I am.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with them. I'll for sure be making a version 2.0.