Thursday, November 11, 2010

Drive By

I'm going to keep things short today. It is a beautiful sun-shiny day, the temperature has a nice crisp feeling, all my kiddos are home and healthy, and my Dear Husband is a grump! How is that for irony? (in his defense, his holiday is being spent replacing an alternator for the second week in a row!) I also have to finish an order that is going all the way to Romania! I'm just astounded that I have a customer on the other side of the world. The www is certainly an awesome tool.

Yesterday I mentioned that I would show you how to use wool in your diapers as an extra-super-duper soaker, without having to knit, crochet or buy expensive wool interlock (though it IS a really yummy fabric). You want to start with a heavily felted 100% wool sweater. It doesn't matter what kind of wool, it just needs to not be "superwash" (meaning you can wash it in the regular laundry without expecting it to fit a dolly). My newest sweater is in the dryer as we speak so for the purpose of this, I used an "oops" pair of woolies that are already felted to the point of no more stretch.

Then you want to sketch out your pattern. Be creative, and don't worry about symmetry, it's getting peed on, it doesn't really have to be pretty.

Now take your cutting tools (I couldn't function without my rotary cutter, but scissors work fine), and cut out your pattern pieces.

Now you should have some super felted wool soakers to use as a booster for your diapers! You can choose to lanolize them so they don't have to be washed unless they are "dirty" and only wash them when you do your regular wool laundry routine, or you can leave them un-lanolized and just throw them into the diaper pail to be washed with your diapers. You can sew them together, serge them, or leave them as is. Because they are heavily felted, there is no need to "finish" the edges because they wont fray!!!

Ta-Da!

Bonus: Remember a long time ago? Like yesterday? I showed you my super awesome scrappy wool dryer balls? (lol say THAT fast 10 times) Just so happens I have a picture of the pattern piece I used to sew my ball. I cut 6-8 of them to make the ball, depending on the size, though I found that having more pieces didn't really affect the finished size of the balls (see yesterdays post). The pieces are 4.5" long and 1.5" across. HAVE FUN!

2 comments:

  1. Wool diaper inserts? I'm not following this. It think its been too long since I've changed diapers.

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  2. CBTS, wool diaper inserts work in two different ways. The first is to draw the moisture away from the soaker, into the body of the diaper. After the body of the diaper can no hold any more liquid, the wool works in reverse to draw the liquid into itself. By nature wool can hold 3x's it's weight in moisture, so it is quite the workhorse. I love wool, it's such an awesome fiber. Lanolize it and it will keep things dry. Don't lanolize and it will absorb. It's breathable and just amazing. Hope that helps clarify. Diapering has changed quite a bit in the past decade or so.

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