As those in Canada know, fabric is hard to find. There is only so much that you can find at Fabricville/Fabricland… I had seen a large fabric store called “Club Tissue” from the Highway heading to Montreal but I had never stopped… but I decided to head there last weekend when I was in the area. I was so surprised at the selection they had! I fell in love with this Retro Owl fabric the minute I saw it and the coordinating fabric with little flowers and peace signs… I knew I had to make a dress out of it!

I am so happy with the way this dress turned out…

The bodice is inspired from one in the Ottobre magazine and I really love the idea of having the elastic in the shoulder straps. The rest of the design is mine… The bodice was a bit big so I added the tie… Of course that means that it will just fit for longer…

ETA: Here is the Mushroom version of this dress…

I have been trying to sew more these last few weeks…

I made the gdiaper, a few training pants and then last week I found some great knit material and decided to sew a few things from a pattern. Of course, as usual, like cooking, I ending up using the pattern as a guideline and adding my own details or mix and matching things together…

I have been getting Ottobre magazine for a while now. Last year I cancelled my subscription but I still have many patterns to work with… maybe I’ll renew again soon though now that I have a girl to sew for 🙂

Ottobre is an amazing Finnish  magazine (available in many languages) that comes 4 times a year for the children’s issues. It has pictures modelling the clothing and then in the middle has the full-size patterns and instructions. The patterns are a bit daunting when you look at them but once you get over the initial shock it is pretty easy to work with.

Each article of clothing is assigned a colour on a certain page. You find the colour on the page and then you find the number of the pattern piece. After that you just need to trace the right size. Some people use tracing paper but I found that the easiest way is taking pieces of plastic sheeting and tracing with permanent marker, then I just write the details on the pattern pieces and cut them out. Not only do I find it easier to use, but the pieces also don’t wrinkle or tear…

Here are two things I have made in the last few days…

(long sleeve jumper)

Short Sleeve shirt (I have added a bit of elastic to the sleeve since I look the pic)

I also made this little dress, upcycled from a onesie… (Onesie’s and EC don’t go well together)… I just cut off the bottom and added the skirt and waist…It is really girly but looks very comfortable…

A store near me was liquidating their stock of gdiapers in a two for one sale. Though I have always been a “Bummis” prefold and cover fan, I decided at that price it was worth it to give them a try, especially since I had read many places that the gdiaper system can be used with prefolds.

When Wilhelmina was born we tried our much loved Bummis covers on her for the night and it just didn’t fit right and they still don’t for right but the gdiapers fit amazingly well.

At home she is always in a prefold with no cover, but just a prefold belt holding it up, it is perfect because it makes EC easy and we feel right away if she is even slightly wet.

But when we go out, I want a well fitting diaper that is easy to get on and off and the gdiaper turned out to be exactly what we needed. However, the small Bummis prefolds that I have and use just didn’t fit right in the the small gdiaper cover, so I was using the flushable inserts when we went out. The problem with that was that we would often come home and she would still be dry (I potty her when we are out) but there would sometime be a tiny stain of bm so though it wasn’t “used” I couldn’t reuse it either. So the solution was to make my own inserts. These work perfectly in the gdiaper and keep the fit of the diaper trim. I used 2 layer of “Zorb” sandwiched between 2 layers of flannel and made them the exact same size as the flushable inserts.

Because I will be travelling in 3 weeks and out of the house for 3weeks, I needed to decide what I would do diaper wise. I will be using the prefolds and diaper belt while I am at Annie’s, but for the travelling and the time in Vancouver, I will be using the gdiapers exclusively. At this moment I have a few gdiapers but only two of the small size. The medium just don’t fit Wilhelmina yet and I doubt that they will be fitting that much better in 3 weeks. Though I will bring them if she happens to outgrow the small while we are in BC, I felt the need to get some more of the small size so I won’t get stuck. But instead of buying, I decided to try to make them…

I thought that the hardest part would be to find the snaps, but it turns out that the Elastic was what I couldn’t find… (and I only found velcro and not aplix)

Though I might tweak a few things still (and try to find some better elastic) I am quite happy with the results…

Here are the inside and the outside of the cover (made with knit fabric I already had)

I made a liner out of PUL, but I can use the “gdiaper” liners in there also

I didn’t have knit ribbing, so I used a scrap of normal knit for the leg cuff and pulled it tight while sewing

Here is one for the snaps for the liner. It is “snap tape” so all I did was cut and sew it in.

(Ignore the bad stiching… it was almost 1am when I did the velcro)

All together with the liner snapped in and the cloth insert

All done! and Action shots…

As I said, I really want to find better elastic that is wider. I covered the elastic on these with Orange Knit fabric which made it a bit stiffer than I would have liked but it is still very usable and looks comfortable.  Besides the waist, the trim and fit is exactly the same and the liner that I made is interchangeable with the original gdiapers.

I plan on making more of these 🙂