Tutorial - How to make your own cloth wipes

This is my first tutorial, so if it's awful. oh well, deal with it ^_^. Anyways, I found out a couple of days ago that Blake has apparently developed an allergy to disposable wipes (Like the Huggies or Pampers brands). So, Along with cloth diapering, we are now going to be using cloth wipes! I didn't feel like spending money to buy them, and I figured I know how to sew so I'd see if I could make some myself. After talking to some of my cloth diaper mommies on a couple of forums that I'm on, I took the plunge and just went for it. 

I headed for Johann's Fabric Store (love that place!), and lucky me, all of the flannel was on sale! Yay! I got 3/4 of a yard of 4 different patterns of flannel (Blue solid, white with dots, green jungle, and green/yellow stripes). This was enough to make 48 two-layer flannel wipes. I put the solid blue an the white with dots together, and the green jungle with the green and yellow stripes. Cute right? The photos are mostly of the blue and white combo since I did that one first. Anyways, take your two layers of flannel and lay them flat, putting the wrong sides (The less fuzzy or dimmer side of the pattern) together. I made 6x6 inch wipes, and they are great, but next time I think I'm going to do 8x8". I'll get less wipes from the fabric this way, but the wipes will be bigger. This is a lot better for people with larger hands (i.e. Pat), more coverage that way ;) Pin the fabric together..

Use a ruler or measuring tape and measure out whatever size wipes you want and pin at the measurements (either 6x6 or 8x8 or 8x6, your choice). (See below) 

Cut right next to the pins, right at the intervals that you measured out.

When you're cutting the flannel, you want to overlap your cuts, so that you know what the intervals that you need to cut are, even after the pinned areas are already cut off. Make sense?

See? Here's the first square that I cut off, from the corner. See the overlapped cuts so that I know where to cut for the next square? Easy-peasy. 

Just keep doing that, cutting squares at the intervals that you have measured, until you have a little pile of squares like this. Make sure you pin at least the centers so that the two layers stay together.

See my nice little piles of almost wipeys? 

Next, set your sewing machine to the middle zigzag stitch. Too big and I don't think that they will stick together too well, too small, same thing. If you're like me, and don't have a serger (boohoo), sewing with the zigzag stitch on your machine will work fine. However, something I learned along the way. Don't sew your wipes with the stitching completely on the fabric like this...

... Because when you wash them, the edges will fray and while it doesn't affect the way they work, it does make them look a little ratty. And for someone OCD like me, that's a little bothersome. Anyways, Instead of sewing them like that ^, sew them with one side of the zigzag on the fabric, and the other side JUST over the side, so that it doesn't punch into the fabric, but still gathers itself together. It looks a little more like a serger did it, and it's a lot cleaner after going through the washer and dryer. I don't think any of the wipes that I sewed this way frayed at all! Plus, it just looks nicer, see?

After sewing 48 of this little things, all four sides (which is 192 sides if you're interested), I was DONE sewing for a little while. But now I have wipes that don't have all that crap that disposables have in them (kinda like cloth and disposable diapers, imagine that!), and they are cute to boot (ditto)! 

Blue/white + dots

Green jungle animals/green, yellow, and white stripes.

Aren't they cute? And much better for Blake's skin, which was the point. Plus, when we're done using them as wipes, they can be used as rags, or wash clothes, or whatever. Cool way to recycle right? And it's just that much less crap we're putting into a landfill every year. I mean, I'm not all green or whatever, but if I can help out our planet a little just by not dumping lots of baby poo and everything that comes with that into a landfill to sit there for thousands of years (since they take forever to decompose), then I'll do it! Hope that wasn't too confusing. Until next time! <3

So, not a whole lot to write about today. No crafts or long posts or pics today, just a little update. I've been shopping around for home insurance for our NEW HOUSE!! Anyways, I hate insurance companies, they're obnoxious. They ask all the questions and are like "Wow, so many great discounts! We're saving you tons of money!" This is after I'd already spoken with two other insurance companies, one of which was like $400 less than that one! How does that make sense? Anyways. We had our inspection on Friday, and our inspector was raving about how good of a shape the house is in! There is only one problem. The breaker boxes, which are probably original breakers from when the house was built in 1974, are made by a company who has been proven to have faulty wiring and such. So we have to get the whole 200 amp box replaced if we want it to be safe. BUT, we got a $1000 price break on our purchase price, so it's just part of our expense of buying the house. But other than that, there's pretty much NOTHING wrong with the house, which makes me really happy! So we're probably going to be closing on or around July 9th, so I really hope that we can do that by then! My wonderful brother and sister in law are going to be coming up for my father-in-law's wedding, and I really want to be moved in (Or close to it) by the time they are here so that they can stay with us! I think that would be awesome. Plus, did I mention that we're getting kittens?! But we can't have them until we move to our new house, because we can't have pets at our apartment =[ More on them later! That's it for today! Until next time! <3

I know it's been, well, forever since I've posted, but it's been a little crazy here! Since July, Blake has learned to walk and feed himself. My baby is growing up, he turned one year old in February, and is now 16 months old already! We also took a 2 week vacation to California for Christmas, Pat and I celebrated our first year of marriage in April, and we are now in the process of closing on our first house! So, a lot has happened.  Here are a couple of pictures, just to show you how big Blake's gotten and show you a snapshot into our life!

Blake was a monkey for his first halloween, and was adorable! Funny story.. Even though my sister-in-law and best friend, Kristen, lives in North Carolina, she dressed her son in the exact same outfit for his first halloween that night! How crazy is that?

Family picture at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California. We went there with my parents and sisters to visit my brothers and their wives, and we had a blast! This trip to the aquarium was a huge, full family trip, and Blake loved it! He even touched a starfish!

Blake completely destroyed his birthday cake. It was a two layer chocolate on chocolate cake. At first he was really unsure about what he was supposed to do with it, but he figured it out pretty fast.

My guys after Blake's first hair cut (I had just cut Pat's hair too). Aren't they a good looking bunch? I'm a lucky girl

Married for one year, and we both got iPhones! My mom was great and kept Blake overnight, so we got to go out, have some fun, then come home and have the night for just us! It was nice.

 

And oh yeah, Blake loves video games, just like his parent's do.

Here's half of my stash of cloth diapers! Aren't they cute? If you'd asked me a year ago what I thought about cloth diapers, and if I would ever do it, I'd say they were gross and NO! However, Blake has a really sensitive little tush, and I was either preventing or treating a diaper rash, and I got sick of it! The last straw was when his little booty was so sore that I couldn't even wash him with water without him crying, so I talked with a friend of mine who CDs her daughter, she educated me a little, and we made the big switch! Is it gross? Yeah, but it's about the same as changing a disposable diaper, PLUS these save you money! We were spending $60+ on diapers EVERY MONTH! Since buying my stash, we haven't bought any diapers! In 5 months!! That's savings of $150 so far (we would have spent over $300 on diapers in that time, instead we only spent that $150 on cloth diapers, and they are reusable, that's a one time cost)! Plus, with these ones it's practically the same as using a disposable when putting it on the baby. I'll do a post going into cloth diapers a little bit more at a later date, but I'm pretty passionate about it. I mean, I totally would have used them from the time that Blake was a newborn if I'd been more educated. I, like so many other people in this world, thought that the big flat diapers that you have to fold, secure with pins, then cover with plastic ugly pants were it for the cloth diapering world! My, was I wrong!! Anyways, enough of my rambling on that subject, I'll save it for a later post.... But here's my diapers, again, aren't they cute?!

And my little man! This was just today, so it's the most recent picture I have of him. Huge, right? He walks, and talks, and I love him to death! He's still a major pain in the butt, but a cute one, so we put up with him ;)

Anyways, now that you're all caught up.. I really am planning on keeping up with this blog now. I have new inspiration, plus I want to do tutorials and such on my projects! I've been following several other blogs, and just really wanted to work on mine and keep it going, and hopefully everything that's happening in my life now will help me keep up some good and new material! So, until next time! <3