The Dream May Yet Be Within Reach

So maybe I was a bit hasty about wanting to smash the serger because I tested it on some jersey this morning (dh was nice enough to donate 2 of his T-shirts to the cause) and it works fine even with 3 threads. It's not great - the loops are kind of loose - but it works. I talked to my mom and she told me she often shared my desire to smash the thing, but she also told me that she did use the serger on towels and such, so it used to work on thicker and rougher fabric. We think we got hosed when we took it to the place in Streetsville to get it 'fixed,' and it seems they charged us $100 for merely cleaning it. My mom hopes to find someplace that will really fix the serger (and apparently the usual cost for servicing a sewing machine is around $30) so that I'll be able to serge whatever fabric I want.

Anyway, I washed dh's T-shirts and then set about unravelling them.

I have to stop here and say that I HATE OLD SPICE DEODORANT. It smells so strong and it leaves so much goop on dh's shirts that it just doesn't wash out, and it transfers the smell to everything else in the wash. I had to stop washing dh's clothes with mine or dd's because they'd all come out smelling like Old Spice. DH doesn't use Old Spice anymore (because I asked him nicely to NEVER GET ANY MORE OF THAT CRAP) but the scent is so insidious that it seems to have worked it's way into the chemical make-up of his shirts. And I must admit that other brands of mens' deodorant aren't much better. I washed his donated T-shirts three times and I still couldn't get all of the smell out.

"Do you want your diapers to smell like a man?"

Okay back to the diaper making. I was able to take the seam ripper to one of the shirts, but the other one had been overlocked AND serged everywhere so I just cut the seams out. That's when I took some scrap pieces and tested the serger again (with 3 threads, which is better and much less likely to unravel than using 2 threads) and everything seemed to be working again. It's loose, like I said, but it's useable.

I grabbed the small pattern by mistake and was able to cut three full pieces out of one of the shirts before realising it was not the medium pattern. It ended up being a good mistake, though, because I always intended to make newborn-small diapers and now I know that a medium sized T-shirt will yield a 3-layer diaper with enough fabric left over for one, maybe two external soakers.

The elastics went one pretty easily (once I stopped backstitching them - for some reason my sewing machine doesn't like doing that and always leaves a giant haystack of thread on the back - oy):

I left off the front elastic because these are meant to be used with a Snappi (which will hold it to the baby's belly tightly enough without needing the elastic). This is two layers of jersey, and the last will go on top. Ideally I wanted to do 4 layers but I could only get 3 whole pieces out of the shirt. A size large shirt will probably give me 4 layers.

I serged the top layer on; this is the inside of the diaper.

Here it is with wings tucked in (how it would look with snaps):

And my favourite, with wings on top (Snappi position):

And the back - the elastics really did go on nicely this time:

I quickly drafted a pattern for a bone-shaped external soaker pad and then serged one of three more layers of the same shirt. Again, I wanted 4 layers, but there just wasn't enough.

Soaker in diaper:

I'm very pleased with this diaper, though after making two of them from this pattern, I think I'll make the front a bit wider. Other than that, I like it a lot.

Goodwill is having a 50%-off sale this Friday, and I intend to stock up on T-shirts, because I might just be able to do this cloth diaper sewing thing...