Friday, January 16, 2009

Wipes.

One of the things that I needed for the new baby (cause I'm pregnant... in case you forgot, I know I do) was more wipes. I have a decent amount now but with two babies in diapers I know I'm going to need a substantial amount. So when I was cleaning out the laundry center and found a big stack of old receiving blankets... Can you guess what I did? I think you're smart enough to figure this out.


I got out the old cutting board, ruler and rotary cutter and got to work. Now the rotary cutter always scares me but I use it anyway and managed to only cut Ephrim and I in the process. Ephrim barely bled at all. I did it in chunks of time over two days (cutting the squares, not Ephrim). In the end I had the pile of 8x8 flannel squares above and a big pile of scraps that you can see below. I am planning to use the scraps to try making a few of these .


Last night once the kids were in bed (accept for Joe) and I was done spending quality time with my husband (sitting in my chair watching a Canucks embarrassment game) I got to work on ironing all the squares.

It really is worth it to iron things before you sew them. And if you are sewing things with seams it's really worth it to press all of your seams. I had 120 squares and it took a bit of time but the end product turned out much better because of it. If you have ever sewn with me at all you will know that I cut as many corners as possible and I am a newly reformed "ironer" so you know that it's that important.

See how tidy my square pile is now. The ironing made it much easier for me match the squares up when I serged them.

I am blessed enough to have a husband who thought a serger was a great Christmas present a few years ago. Never mind the fact that I begged him for months before hand. So I can just whip these up pretty quick with the serger. If you only have a regular sewing machine then you can just sew your two pieces of fabric together with the wrong sides facing and then trim your edges and finish the wipe with a zigzag stitch around the edge so the fabric doesn't fray too much. If you don't have a sewing machine then just cut some squares and use them as is until they die.

And voila here's my pile of 60 wipes! Now 60 wipes are just too much for me so if someone out there needs some wipes I'll be happy to send you 20 of mine. Free! Because I'm great like that ;) I'll even be sure to filter out any with stains. These are made from old recieving blankets people! Also if you have some old blankets that you want turned into wipes you can come here and do it or pay me 50 cents a wipe to do it for you.


All in all I figure it took me about 4 hours to do all of the wipes, which works out to about 4 minutes per wipe. Definitely worth it.

I guess this was my first official tutorial! Yay!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

They look great! You're quite creative ;)

Rachel@oneprettything.com said...

This is such a great idea! Hope excited am I to have found the link to this in my inbox??? I'll be linking.

Anonymous said...

I did this too but mine are one ply!

Anonymous said...

That's a great idea... I'm due in 5 weeks, so I'll be in need of wipes soon :)
Thanks for sharing!

Bonnie said...

I would love some of your wipes if the offer is still open... I have an 11 month old little girl that I cloth diaper while we are at home and we use cloth wipes whenever possible - but we only have a dozen right now so I am washing them about every day to day and a half... I wish I had a serger :)