All About Fleece

Okay so a lot of people in the cloth diapering community rave about wool.  I don't blame them, it's pretty awesome.  But it's also pretty expensive, especially if you're buying mainstream stuff.  There is an alternative that you can use and while not quite as effective as wool, it works well and still lets your baby's bum breathe - fleece.

Addie's Packer Outfit

A while back I won a pair of fleece longies in a lotto.  I finally started using them because they fit now and it's getting cooler out.  I recently made my daughter a Green Bay Packer outfit and wanted to make her some pom poms to go with, so I bought some Green & Gold fleece.  Well, needless to say, I have a ton of dark green fleece left.  So I'm setting out to making some soakers.

It turns out they're pretty easy to make.  I used the Katrina's Sew Quick Soaker pattern.  The only goof I made was accidentally sewing a leg on inside out.  Oops!  Well that didn't take too long to fix.  A yard of blizzard fleece, on sale, is about $5.  You can easily make 5 or more soakers out of that yard of fleece!  Five wool soakers would run you a couple hundred dollars, so there is immediate savings right there!

Another benefit of fleece over wool?  Laundry is so much easier!  You wash it like any other laundry.  And to help it be more water resistant you just throw in a dryer sheet.  You don't have to worry about lanolizing and the wool taking forever to dry - just throw it in the dryer!  And if you're washing cloth diapers, you're doing it every few days anyway, so no extra laundry to be done.

My first soaker - not bad, huh?

Yes, there are a few downsides to fleece.  The main two are that you can't reuse them over and over like you can with wool.  Once they get peed on, you have to wash them.  The other is that they are not absorbent like wool, rather they repel the pee, hopefully sending it back into the diaper and preventing wet sheets.

Don't get me wrong, I love wool.  I have one soaker that I won from a WAHM and I really love it.  But it's getting too small and I wool isn't in my budget.  Hopefully once winter gets closer I can find some wool sweaters at GoodWill and make some upcycled soakers, but for now, I enjoy my fleece.  Just a warning though, I've heard from many mamas that if you start loving your fleece, you will eventually move on to wool!

I haven't been using my fleece long, and would love to hear from mamas who use it regularly.  What do you love about fleece?  What do you dislike about it?

If there's anyone out there who can't sew that would like some fleece soakers or longies just send me a message!  I enjoy sewing and would love to make some for you for a decent price.  I am not an official WAHM but would love to be someday.