Just wanted to do a quick shout out.  I received an email in my inbox a few days ago re: Rebekah Wilson’s Hope Chest Legacy clear-out sale.  If you’ve been putting off buying her books, now is your chance.  Everything is 50% off!  Head on over there before it’s all gone!  Once the books are sold, it may be 2 - 3 years before she re-prints.

I stocked up on books to teach my daughters needlework skills, since I’m a bit sewing impaired myself.  Lots of great items so head on over, quickly!!

A few days ago I noticed that I had missed an excellent free resource over at the Homeschool Freebie website.  The day after I saw that I had missed out my husband mentioned that he would like for me to start teaching our oldest daughter (5 years old) how to sew.  She’s definitely too young to learn machine sewing yet, and I am a bit…sewing challenged.  I can muster basic repairs, and sew by machine, but I was never taught hand sewing in  a comprehensive or structured way.  When I started my search today (emailing my trusted homeschooling reviews yahoo group) - one of the ladies sent me a link to this same sewing resource.  Jim Erskine has decided to offer it for free on an ongoing basis!  Here is the link :).

If you are domestically challenged you can use it to teach yourself, then use it to teach your daughters!  The Bible tells us to be keepers at home, and knowing how to effect basic repairs, and more advanced hand sewing skills definitely fall into the keeping the home category.

Well, by now you’ve probably already seen the picture of the re-usable cloth diaper wipes I made for our coming baby in the bloggy carnival giveaway below. Now YOU can learn how to make these super-duper simple wipes. All it takes is some fabric, a sewing machine of some sort, some thread, a pair of scissors, and YOU!

First for some background information. When I was pregnant with my first born I made a pile of cloth diaper wipes, 30 of them, out of white diaper flannel that I bought, I also made diaper doublers, fitted one size diapers, pee pads for lying baby on, breast pads etc. etc. but the diaper wipes were the easiest :).

For my second pregnancy for some reason….some of the wipes had gone missing. I think they are like socks that way, they just up and…leave! In any case we were living in a tiny little holiday trailer with a 3 year old and a newborn, so I bought some mail order, they were very very small, and weren’t really any nicer than the ones I had made before, but, we were desperate! They cost $0.75 each, and were tiny, maybe 4″ x 4″, but they did get the job done.

For this baby, I see that MANY of our wipes are missing, are some of them in strange storage tubs out in the shed that is too full for me to get my pregnant belly into? Yes, that is the shed with the snow drift in front of the door in a previous post, but DH has shovelled all the snow away :). So I knew, we would need MORE wipes! MORE MORE!

In any case, we were at Larry’s parents doing some work for a couple of weeks, and his Mom has a serger, I brought some fabric, and sewed 45 wipes in a single day, they take around 1 minute a piece when you get going, but with children there are always interruptions :).

The fabric I used was a gift, so it was free! YAY! You can use any sort of fabric you have on hand, old t-shirts with a few holes (just avoid those when cutting out wipes), free fabric from relatives - now that my family knows I sew from time to time they seem to like to give us their fabric they’ll not be needing, old sheets, or you can actually buy some too! At the fabric store there is always a discount section so make sure to look there. I basically had $0 cost on these, other than the basic tools needed that I already had, just 45 minutes of time for $33.75 savings, hmmm, good pay!

So, now that you have your fabric and tools assembled, let’s go! These are super simple instructions. I’m not what you call a real sewer or a seamstress, but I am trying to learn, so these are very very simple instructions! I have to apologize for the photos, I’m not a talented digital photographer :).

1. Cut up your fabric. I just folded up my fabric and cut squares out of it by sight. The first wipes I made I used a cardboard template I had cut out to the size I wanted and cut around it. This time I just hacked out squares of approximately 10″ x 5″. They are irregularly shaped because of this, but, they don’t need to all be the same! They are for wiping baby bums! Do you think baby will mind if they aren’t perfect? That’s why I say - ANYONE can make these!



2. Get ready to sew. If you have a serger, set it for a three thread overlock stitch that will ’seal up’ the outside edges of the fabric. Adjust tension as needed. Wow, did I ever have to adjust the tension. These wipes are just a single layer of flannel and are pretty thin, so do some experiments on scraps of the fabric you are working with to figure out what tension you’ll be needing to make the stitching fairly even, without bunching and scrunching. If you have a sewing machine, set it for a fairly small zig-zag stitch, and again experiment with the tension (not as tricky as with a serger!) to make sure the stitches are balanced.
3. Start sewing. Again, I used a serger, but if you have a sewing machine set for zig-zag, don’t worry about hemming, or folding over any edges, this is easy! Just go around the outside edge, close to the edge, you can round the corners off while you sew (sew in a curved line, and trim extra fabric later), or pivot on the corners for square wipes. They won’t unravel, no worries! Some of the serging that came undone on my first batch of wipes I just corrected by zigzagging the area, and it never came undone! You may want to stitch twice around the outside edge just to be secure that your wipes are structurally sound.If you are serging, just pick a corner to start at, and start heading around. Sadly, I don’t have any good tips for serging around corners, but a serger can go around a pretty tight curve, so don’t be afraid to pull your fabric around through the curve, sometimes my curves worked out, sometimes not (some fabric would fold over instead of getting cut cleanly away). With a serger, you can just round the edges, when you go around the curve the extra fabric will be cut off.

   Do you have tips for making it around the corner successfully every time? Please comment! Again, these are for baby, so no stress if they aren’t perfect! If you are sewing you do need to do the back stitch and forward stitch trick at the corner to secure your stitching before you take off down the side.

   

4. When you come all the way to the beginning of the wipe, just serge past the corner and leave the tail on, don’t worry about trimming the tail or anything right now.

   We are trying to sew fast because we have children underfoot, so just head on past the corner, serge a bit of a tail, and grab the next wipe. If you are sewing you will need to back-stitch and forward stitch to end your sewing when you come to the last corner of course. Then you can just pull out some thread, and start going on your next wipe, and just leave the old wipe to the back/side of your machine.

5. Start your next wipe, as in step 3. Your attached wipe will move around as you turn your new wipe that you are working on. Don’t worry, this shouldn’t be a problem or distraction (well, for me it wasn’t, I just wanted to go fast!). This time when we go past the last corner, it will cut off the attached wipe with the fabric cutter (see the above picture), see, you just saved yourself a couple of seconds ;). Put your finished wipes in a pile. Keep going with steps 3 - 5 until you are done with your pile of wipes. Now you have a finished pile of wipes!

   And here is an individual wipe - see it is a bit irregular, but again, it works for wiping up!

   Now you can get your little helper, mine is my 5 year old daughter, to trim off the threads for you, and voila, you are in wipey land!

Maybe some of the SAHM’s out there might want to get really good at this, and start a home based business sewing diaper wipes, customizable, out of a variety of fabric types, prints etc. Even when you do buy them, you can save SO much money over disposable wipes! Another issue with disposable wipes is the preservatives put in them. How long have they sat wet on the shelf in their bag through all types of weather conditions? What do they put in them so that they don’t mold? Hmmm, it likely isn’t healthy!

If you have found this article helpful please feel free to link to it on your blog! I hope it has been a blessing to some of you!