Wordless{ish} Wednesday: Working with wool

{With baby #2 on the way, I've decided to take the leap into making my own diaper covers.  Thanks to handy dandy sites like Pinterest, it's super easy to find patterns and tutorials for making all sorts of different cloth-diapering accessories.  I decided to start off by making some wool diaper covers using thrift-store sweaters as my material.}

{This is the perfect time of year to score some excellent deals on wool sweaters; my local thrift store is offering them for half off of their already low prices, so I managed to pick up a few that met my requirements--soft, cheap and 100% wool.   Some tutorials recommend cutting up the sweaters beforehand so that they will felt more evenly in the wash, so I took a few minutes on each one to remove the cuffs, pockets and sleeves from each one.}

{Once your sweaters are cut, place them in a pillow case that you then knot; this keeps all of the wool fluff that the sweaters shed during the felting process from clogging up your washer and drier. I also threw in a few golf balls into each case to aid in agitation.  I wound up washing the sweaters in a hot wash twice and drying them on high twice just to be on the safe side.}

{Using this soaker pattern as my guide, I cut out all of the pieces that I would need--I decided to be a little wild and crazy and used cuffs from another sweater to punch up the contrast a bit.  One tip to the wise--be sure to use polyester thread when sewing any diaper cover to avoid any kind of moisture wicking from the cover.}

{Here's Sammy modeling his new cover; I think it turned out pretty well especially considering that this was my first time ever making something like this.  Now all I need to do is lanolize the cover and then it will be ready for Sammy's super-soaking naps.}