Project #22 - Nappy Covers (finished)

Before the birth of our son, I priced nappy covers and was HORRIFIED that they ranged in price from $15 - $25 for a decent one. Of course, like with everything that costs more than I want to pay, I thought "Well, why don't I have a crack at making some?" So I did just that.

The pattern that appealed to me most was the one for the Chloe's Toes side snapping nappy (or diaper) cover, for the simple fact that it looked nice and easy (and would provide an excuse to use my snap press).

One of the problems I had when making the cover was that I couldn't find anywhere that sold the Fold Over Elastic (FOE) other than online. As I was just making these for a test I didn't really want to order a metre of the FOE for $1.20 and then pay some ridiculous price for postage, so I talked to the lady at our local sewing shop and she suggested using fitted sheet elastic. At .69 cents a metre, I figured it was worth a shot and so far it appears to have worked!

Here is a picture of the finished cover using PUL as the main material and the fitted sheet elastic as the binding around the edges:

I would have put a baby in them to show you what they looked like, but he was too busy sleeping (how rude!)

This cover does use a lot of snaps but that is only because it is multi-sized, so it should last a lot longer (it uses a total of 20 snaps). My one word of advice when sewing this cover is to make sure you hold the elastic at roughly the same tension the whole way round, particularly around the legs. If you don't, you will end up with lopsided legs which means that you will get leaks - and you don't want that!

Anyway, all up these covers took around 20 - 30 minutes each to make (most of that work is in putting the snaps on) and cost roughly $2 to make, so savings galore to be had!