Adventures with Stretch Terry

I really, really want to make some stretch terry fitted diapers for my dd, but because of my serger issues it hasn't been possible. But then my mom brought her awesome 20-year-old touch-screen does-everything sewing machine when she and my dad were here a few days ago, and it seems like I could actually do it.

The machine is a Janome embroidery machine, and it cost $3000 back in the 1990s (who knows how much it would cost now!):

This machine seems to do every conceivable stitch, but most importantly it's a true overlocking sewing machine. It has a special foot for it, unlike my sewing machine which uses the same foot as zigzag stitch.

In order to test out this machine's overlock stitch (and also use up the rest of the two hooded towels I had left after the failed terry diaper) I decided to make some wipes. They're double-layered, terry side out on both sides. I managed to make 17 of them (there are 16 in the picture because one of them had fallen to the floor):

I did straight sides for the first few wipes...

...before I realised that doing rounded corners would be much easier:

I think they turned out quite nicely:

I had two newer (whole) baby hooded towels left, and after taking a seam-ripper to the binding I overlocked the edges and made two single-layer terry flat diapers:

I'd already made two other flat diapers using the overlock on my machine, and you can definitely see the difference between the overlock stitches. The green terry has the 'real' overlock from my mom's machine and the white one below (with purple stitching) is from my machine, which can't sew over the edge of the fabric, so I had to sew almost a cm away from the edge and then cut it away the excess fabric.

It works, though. The older towels have been through 4 or 5 washes and I haven't noticed any fraying. Those towels are a bit rough so I fold them with the loops to the inside:

This is the 'Diaper Bag Fold' in case anyone's wondering. It's great for smaller flat diapers. I use these for overnights (with a Mother-ease OS fitted and a doubler made of half of a flannel baby blanket folded in 8ths) because I can Snappi them easily. Previously I used a big flannel baby blanket, but I had to pin it and I'm terrible at pinning diapers.

If I can get my hands on some more stretch terry (I might even pick up some cheap hooded towels at Walmart or wherever) I'll try my hand at making a simple Snappi-able fitted diaper.