Cloth Baby Wipes

As with the dresser project I was pretty much forced to complete another project I've been needing to finish. I was in dire need of more cloth wipes because I barely have enough to get by with Sam.

9:30 last night Stephen pulls down my sewing machine, sets it up for me, and tells me to get to work, lol. I actually really like to sew, once I get started, it's finding the motivation to start that's hard for me.

My fabulously talented sister-in-law taught me how to use a sewing machine probably 2 years ago. I just never wanted to put the money down on one because I didn't think I'd use it all that much. However, another sister just happened to have a brand spankin new Janome that had never been out of the box and the chances of it seeing the light of day weren't to bright, bah ha!...ok, sorry, lame.

Anywho, the point of this post is to give some very simple instructions on how to make your own cloth wipes if you're down with that sorta thing. We are still cloth diapering like crazy and are gearing up to cloth diaper #2 as well. You can buy them online, but for how easy and super cheap they are to make, why bother?

Since I made these for myself they don't look all that great, but for goodness sakes I'm wiping rear ends with these, so who cares what they look like?

Things you will need:
Sewing machine
Thread
Old receiving blanket or cotton flannel

I'm assuming if you're doing this project you already know how to thread a machine & bobbin and that you can sew a decently straight line. So I'm going to skip all of that instruction. You can find a how-to video on youtube if you really need to know.

I like my wipes to be big enough to only have to use 1-2 for a heavy duty clean up, but I wasn't in a measuring mood last night. Using a regular sized receiving blanket I ended up with about 20 squares per blanket. They don't have to be perfectly cut, mine are pretty jagged right now.

I set my machine to the middle zig zag pattern and sewed all the way around, as close to the edge as I could. The edges will fray quite a bit, but it'll work itself out after a few washes (this is my experience with it anyways).

*Zig zag pattern*

Make sure when you start and finish each wipe you do a few reverse stitches to lock the stitches in place; this helps to keep it from coming unraveled.

Cut the excess threads hanging off. Repeat.

Easy, easy. Start to finish I think it took me about an hour. I got up several times because of my back, so it can be done in less than an hour.

Now I have a nice, new stack of cloth wipes for a soon-to-be new bum.

And just in case you're wondering how I maintain these bad boys:
I've heard some people leave their wipes in an actual wet wipe box with a wipes solution. That's cool if you do it that way, it just screams "harbored bacteria" for me.
I keep mine in a stack on my changing table and have a large squirt bottle with water and a tiny bit of baby soap. I spray a wipe right before use then drop that sucker in the diaper pail with the dirty cloth diaper when I'm finished.

And on a side note: I don't think I've posted anything on colloidal silver (you can google it), but I've started using this in his spray bottle as opposed to soap and water. When Sam gets diaper rash, he gets it really hard core. Since I've been using the silver his little bottom has been rash free!

So there ya go...lots of random tidbits for your blogging pleasure.