Earth Week . Cloth Wipes Tutorial and Recipe

Cloth wipes were one of the first things I made for the baby. They are super easy to use, super easy to make, and a lot nicer than flimsy disposable wipes. When "soiled" just toss them in with the cloth diapers.

Step 1: Gather and cut your materials. I used flannel and sherpa. The wipes in the photo are 8" square so you'll need squares that are 8.5" to have a seam allowance of 1/4" all around. You can use a rotary cutter and ruler or regular scissors. (The wipes in the tutorial are from scraps but you can get the idea).

Step 2: Start toward the end of one side and sew all the way around, leaving an opening for turning. If you are using a thick and a thin fabric, sew with the thick stuff on top (right sides together) so that the feed dogs don't eat one side more than the other. Make sure to backstitch at the opening. Clip your corners off.

Step 3: Turn inside out making sure to poke the corners out. Tuck your seam allowances in and pin the opening.

Step 4: Topstitch all the way around. This will keep the wipes nice and flat when you wash and dry them a million times.

The most important thing to remember is that you're going to be wiping a butt with these. They don't need to be perfect -- just soft!

Nature's Fabrics is sponsoring the other half of Earth Week over at Sew a Straight Line. Click here for a coupon code and look in the left sidebar. Nature's Fabrics has a very nice selection of fabric to make your own diapers and wipes.

And now for the best part, my top secret amazing wipes solution recipe. We have been using this solution 3 weeks shy of 2 years and I am having a hard time remembering the last time we had any diaper rash. I know we have had a couple of issues but they were mainly when we were traveling and using disposable diapers.

1 cup distilled or boiled water (we use our Brita pitcher)

1 tbls Dr. Bronner's liquid soap baby mild (we get this in bulk at our co-op but it's at Target)

1 - 2 tsp Burt's Bees apricot baby oil (Target often sends me coupons in the mail)

6 drops or so tea tree oil (you can get this at most vitamin stores like GNC, natural foods stores, or for the best price try Trader Joe's)

We have both a pump and a squirt bottle from that section of Target with all the travel toiletries. Just put a bit on the wipe and you're ready to go.

And my secret to not making solution all the time is to double everything in the recipe except for the water. I put the "stock" solution in a bottle labeled MIX 1:1 and just add water to it when we run out.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Earth Week Sponsor . Monkey Travel Club

My second sponsor for Earth Week is Monkey Travel Club. We have one of her pencil cup cozies covering up a Mason Jar full of diaper dust (a must-have if you use cloth -- it really absorbs odors in the diaper laundry). We had originally planned to do a sock monkey theme in the nursery but it pretty much fell apart. We have this cozy and two handmade sock monkeys. Since Zadie asked to play with them the other day, they're no longer part of the decor. There is just too much other cuteness in the world to make it work.

Our monkey fits perfectly into the room despite the lack of theme. I just love how soft my the yarn is and that Ginny added a lemon button as a special touch. Ginny is a seamstress who makes amazing quilts, bibs, bags and even designs and sells her own patterns in her other Etsy shop, iSew. These cup cozies are really eco friendly. Instead of wasting the cardboard sleeve every time you buy a cup of coffee, use one of these. They're a great conversation starter and will last a long time. She also makes super cute owl items and a bunch of different monkey items.

Check out the flickr group for the Monkey Travel Club to see monkeys and owls on various adventures. He really gets around! Giveaway now closed.

Earth Week Sponsor . Natural Home Essentials

I'm very excited to introduce the first Earth Week Sponsor, Natural Home Essentials, a local company. Karen sells most of her products at our co-op. She is a pharmacologist specializing in toxicology by day so when she reads a label on a product, she actually knows what those ingredients are. Ten years go, she started to make her own natural home and personal care products so that she could avoid exposing her family to chemicals found in commercial soaps, lotions, etc.

Here's what's special about her products:

- Made with pure oils, butters, waxes, and other natural materials
- Scented only with essentials oils - no artificial fragrances or phthalates
- All palm oil is certified organic & sustainably farmed - no rainforest destruction
- No genetically modified anything!
- As many organic ingredients as possible while still keeping the price reasonable
- Food grade sodium hydroxide, not industrial-grade lye, in the soapmaking process

Over the last few years we have made a gradual shift to more natural products. I don't buy anything with parabens (methylparaben, propylparaben, etc.), SLS, homosalate, or pthalates. I've also been using deodorants without aluminum ingredients for over 10 years. Luckily, it's becoming easier to find these products thanks to this green revolution we're in and websites like Etsy. And we even luckier to have Karen as our neighbor who drops a soap or two on our front porch when we're not looking. Awesome.

Here's the giveaway from Natural Home Essentials:
Pink Grapefruit Soap, a refreshing splash of citrus with the moisturizing power of shea butter

Masala Bay Soap, a moisturizing soap, fragranced with an exotic blend of West Indian bay, citrus, and spices

Healing From The Hive Body Butter Bar, designed to moisturize and protect with only pure, natural ingredients, without feeling heavy or greasy. No unpronounceable ingredients that don't even keep your skin from getting scaly and cracked. Because it contains no added water, no chemical preservatives are required.

Check out the website for more information and a complete list of ingredients. Giveaway now closed.

Project: Earth Week . Cloth Diaper Report (the conclusion)

Back when Zadie was tiny Baby Lemon, I wrote a couple of posts on our experiences with cloth diapers. You can read my posts on cloth diapering a newborn: part 1 here, and part 2 here. I also wrote a guest post over at Surely You Nest on switching to cloth for a toddler. It's been a long time since then and I feel that we have it figured out.

We currently use a mix of pocket diapers and fitteds with covers. I was hesitant at first to try Goodmama diapers but I gave in to a print with rainbows and clouds and was immediately sold. And for good reason. These diapers are hard to beat. We have a heavy wetter here so we need something super absorbent. These last about 3 hours. Some people go coverless but I think they must not have rugs or furniture. We still love Thirsties covers.

We also have a few pocket diapers. Mostly we use the BumGenius brand stuffed with one of the microfiber inserts sold with the diapers and another hemp insert. We have a few Thirsties AIOs as well. These have the microfiber built in to a pocket system. They are surprisingly trim and we still add a hemp insert. The only downside to the Thirsties is that they take a long time to dry.

While the Goodmamas show absolutely no sign of wearing out, I don't see the BumGenius diapers lasting through another 2 years with a second kid (no this is not a hint. I am not, nor do I intend to become, pregnant anytime soon). The velcro is starting to pull off most of the Thirsties AIOs and we've already replaced the covers once. Always a sucker for something new, I bought the BumGenius flip system to try out and I didn't really like it.

We still hang our diapers on the line every chance we get. The sun bleaches out the stains and keeps everything so much nicer. The Goodmamas have been in the drier many times and it doesn't seem to bother them. We always hang the pockets and the covers.

At night and when we are going out for long periods of time, we use the Seventh Generation diapers. We could not get anything to work for nights. I wish I would have believed my friend when she told me not to mess with it. But I'm all type A and had to see for myself. I wasted a LOT of money on pricey inserts. A LOT. We go through a pack of diapers every 3 weeks (more if we travel). We are still using the same wetbags I bought when I was pregnant and even the same bags for the dirty diapers. While I will keep the wetbags because they are still in great shape, I can't wait to toss the laundry bags in the trash. They are spent but I know we're almost done with this. Welcome pullups! There is nothing more green than potty training.

So there you have it. This is what works for us. Every baby is different and every kid has a different body. It does take a little bit of experimenting to figure out what is going to work for you.

And we still love our changing table (above). Check out the monkey cup cozy! I love it. It's concealing a Mason jar of diaper dust. Mr. Lemon just punched a bunch of holes in the top with a hammer and nail. More on the cup cozy tomorrow when I'll be announcing two sponsors.

Don't forget to check out Sabra's Cloth Diapering 101 over at Sew a Straight Line. Tomorrow she will be writing a tutorial on sewing your own cloth diapers (really amazing if you have the time). I will be posting a tutorial on making your own cloth wipes and sharing my secret wipes solution recipe.

Project: Earth Week

Earth Day is Thursday, April 22. I'm thrilled to be joining Sabra of Sew a Straight Line in an entire week of green posts. Sabra has some amazing stuff lined up including a few giveaways, a special guest blogger, and some tutorials -- all centered around sewing projects. I think it's important to think about what we can do to be better citizens of this awesome planet and there is no better time than now.

I like to think that our household is pretty green but we can also do a lot more. This weekend I spent a few minutes tidying up the office and took inventory of all of my unfinished projects (see left sidebar). These are projects that I have the supplies for but have not completed. Some of them haven't actually been started but since I acquired the stuff for them, I counted them. My pledge for Earth Week is to finish 5 of these projects before I buy any new fabric. I know I won't finish any projects this week and I know that doesn't seem like much but that's my plan and that's a pretty big deal for me. Oh how I love to buy supplies...

Anyway, later today I'm going to post about my experience with cloth diapers: what has worked for us, what is working now, etc. Tomorrow I'll post a tutorial for making cloth wipes and a recipe for our solution while Sabra goes to the big leagues with her cloth diaper sewing tutorial. Wednesday I have a secret guest blogger planned and Thursday I'm going to talk about foamy soap. There will be some giveaways here too. I'm really excited about this week and want to send a special thanks out to Sabra for letting me tag along in the festivities.

Oh, and feel free to grab the graphic to post on your site or blog. Also, if you'd like to be a sponsor, shoot me an email and we'll set it up.

Project: Making the pattern

Here is the pattern I worked on for my shirt. The foundation is the vintage Simplicity pattern I used to make the faux silky shirt. I wrote before that I really like how the shirt fits. And since I had pretty much worked out all the kinks of the pattern the first time, I'm hoping it will be a good choice for the ideas that are in my head. For the front of the pattern, I changed very little. I just taped the original to my window and then taped a bunch of pieces of office paper together and taped that on top.

As you can see, I kept the bust dart because it was the right proportion. I also really like using darts with knit because the detail elevates the t-shirt to a higher level. At the existing lengthen/shorten line, I took out about 1.5". With the silky shirt, the extra length makes it more dressy but with the fine knit, I think it will just hang down and look messy. Finally, I redrew the entire hem. I was wearing a shirt with a hemline that I really like so I took it off, set it on top of my pattern, and traced it. I'm sure the new neighbors liked that one.

The back is where I made the most changes. I started with the hem and length changes from the pattern front (you can't forget to do both sides!). Then I removed the shoulder dart and eased the fabric to the middle. Next I just eyed up how big I wanted that top panel to be (see my inspiration photo here) and drew a line perpendicular to the grain line since the middle back seam has a curve to it. I cut on the line and then added "darts" for the gathers. You can see in the photo where I added the blue to show you that. I wanted to keep the waist slim so I used that as my pivot point. I just started at the top edge and cut a straight line with scissors to the waist. Then I split the paper apart until it started to buckle just slightly then taped some paper from the recycling bin to the back of the pattern. (I should have used colored paper -- that's how I was taught. That way if I were to make changes to this pattern and use it again, I'd know what was original and what was added.)

I did this until I felt that I had enough in there. Then I drew a line with a ruler to clean up the top edge and added seam allowances to both pieces. I added a little more to the top of the sleeve pattern (not pictured) to give a little more gather to that using the same slash method. Since the existing belt pattern wasn't long enough, I added some length to that and also made it just a little wider. I'm not sure if the belt will look right with this but I'll make it and try it out. I made some adjustments to the collar to make it somewhere between a band collar and a Peter Pan. I have no idea how that is going to work. I did like the way the Simplicity shirt looked without a collar so that's my backup plan.

The waist of the original pattern is almost fitted. You can see how the pattern has a really nice curve there. I'm not sure at all how my gather adjustments are going to look with that. If you want to try my improv method of pattern alteration: Make sure you use the right marks on the armholes and sleeve pattern. One means the front and one means that back. If you mix them up, the sleeves will not fit. I often chop my little triangles right off; if you have a good pattern and you cut straight, your stuff should line up. I'm lazy but I do not cut corners (ha ha) on sleeves.

Project: We are the truth

I will never forget the day that my friend called me up with her big news. She said, "My daughter's name is Fei Yen ..... and her sister's name is Xiao-niao!!!" I was stunned. This is one of my closest friends. We have known each other since we met at camp when we were 12. She had been waiting a very long time for her adoption referral. The process was lengthy but she knew the envelope from the agency would be arriving that week and I was expecting her call. No one, however, was expecting two babies! She and her husband were hoping to get one baby girl from China but they were one of the few lucky parents to be given twins. What a wonderful surprise.

A few weeks after that, they travelled to China to meet the girls and become their official parents. We met them at the airport when they came back home and it's certainly been true love for me ever since. Even though my friends live in a different town from me, I feel like they're my family. Zadie loves the girls and talks about them all the time. She wears their old clothes and shoes and is currently playing with some of their toys that are on loan. The picture above is the three of them playing some bizarre game with outdoor chairs (toddlers. who knows). They are having a blast whatever it is they're doing.

Last week the media told the story of a woman who adopted a boy from Russia and sent him back. I'm not going to comment on that because I really don't know the whole story and it just makes me cry thinking about it. But I feel that this one negative story has put a bad light on international adoption, which is a truly wonderful thing -- bringing children who need families together with parents who need children. We Are The Truth is an adoption blog day. You can go to the JCICS website for more information or just do a Google search and read other stories from adoptive parents and people who know and love other adoptive parents.