Diaper Tabs

What do you do when you have a baby who's too rotund for size large prefolds?  Add tabs!  

For the prototype for the tabbed diapers, I used some old blue plaid flannel.  There wasn't a long enough strip to go entirely across the back of the diaper, so I split it in the middle.  Also I was being cheap thrifty and trying to use up some yellow and green thread that I have too much of.  Yeah, you can really tell this was a first attempt.

The prototype.

For the next set of tabs I opted to use 2 birdseye flats, each cut into thirds, sewn into tubes and then sewn across the top edge of the back of the diaper.  Not only is this spiffier looking, but it gives me the advantage of an extra inch or so of diaper length.  Why take measures to extend width-wise and neglect length, right?  These diapers are definitely a step up from the flannel prototype.  I decided that plain old birdseye just wasn't cool enough, so I dyed them with the Ice dyeing method.

Some of the ice-dyed tabs.

In use.

That worked out so well that I decided to dye another couple of flats to make more tabs.  For these I tried out shibori.  They kinda look like the patterns on the bottom of a pool. 

Shibori tabs.

An additional, unlooked-for advantage of these tabs is that they're considerably easier to get pins through, since they're just two layers of a looser weave.  The advantage of pins over snappis is that pins actually manage to hold the diaper on a mobile baby if you're not using a cover.  Leaving your pins stuck in a bar of soap is a good way to keep them sliding through the diaper easily.  Hmmm...that gives me an idea for another project!