We hope you are all having a nice and relaxing summer with your families! We have been taking some time off of sewing to spend time with our kids so we haven’t stocked our Etsy store in ages! We finally managed to sneak into our sewing rooms for a few hours and complete some fitteds for our store. Check them out on Etsy!

Well, school is now officially over and summer has begun! We have been so busy with end of school parties, making teacher gifts, and finishing up all of the after school activities, that we have not been able to spend much time in our sewing rooms! Our first priority now is to finish up our in-progress custom orders and then get some more diapers listed on Etsy.

We both have a lot of family activities and vacations planned for the summer so it is just not possible for us to stock on any kind of a schedule, unfortunately. There will be few diapers stocked later today and we will keep stocking more as we finish them over the next few weeks. We hope you all have a fantastic summer with your families!

“Which is better for the outer print of a diaper? Knits or wovens?” We get asked this question all the time and while there are differences between the two types of fabrics, in the end it really just boils down to personal preference. Each type of fabric has pros and cons, but both are wonderful options for diapers.

Knit fabrics are stretchy which is an ideal characteristic in a diaper fabric. It allows the diaper to fit a bit longer and gives the diaper a comfortable t-shirt feel. Unfortunately, knits will usually fade over time and have a tendency to develop holes and/or runs in the fabric. Woven fabrics are more durable and will hold up much better after continuous washing. They will look bright and new for a long time, but they lack the stretch that knits have which makes the diaper feel less flexible.

We love using both types of fabrics for our diapers. When we expanded our product line to include woven fabrics years ago, we understood that the fit of our diapers made with woven fabrics would be different since they lacked the stretch that knits have. To compensate for the loss of stretch, all of our woven print diapers and our AIOs are made with an adjusted pattern where length is added to the wings of the diaper. This alteration to the pattern makes up for the lack of stretch where it is needed most - around the waist.

Still undecided? Try one of each! There are good things about both types of fabrics and after using each type for a while you will figure out if you prefer one over the other.

We love the look of plain ivory velour diapers! We listed a dozen semi-custom Little Caboose™ velour diapers on Etsy this weekend and let the customer choose the snap and thread colors. It is so much fun to see what color combinations people order. Green was a very popular choice this round. These are all headed out to their new owners later today. Enjoy them!

Today I had some fun learning to marble dye. Dharma Trading Company has a tutorial on shaving cream dying and it was just so much fun. Here are the “dye baths” for today (yes, you will soon see some marbled FluffyMail on etsy!). They turned out so pretty!

We will be stocking some semi-custom ivory cotton/poly velour diapers today as well as some organic cotton velour diapers. These will all be traditional Little Caboose style, all sizes, and you can choose the thread and snap colors. You can match the thread and snaps as in the photo below, or mix and match! These will be stocked randomly throughout the day in our Etsy store.

We are thrilled that customers continue to keep us very busy with custom orders 5 years after opening FluffyMail.com! We have had so many requests for custom diapers after closing our wait list recently that we thought we better hurry and decide on a method for taking new orders once we are caught up with the current list. While a wait list seems like the easiest way to do it, it is extremely stressful on us to see dozens of people waiting months and months to place their order. Also, customers contact us daily about being added to the list so it has the potential to grow and grow and grow until the wait is so long your baby will be out of diapers before we get to you!

To keep things relatively easy on us, fair to all of you, and most importantly - organized, we have decided to list custom fitted slots in our Etsy store as we do for AIOs. The custom fitted slots will be for full custom diapers (you choose everything) and the number of fitteds you can order with each slot is unlimited. We will stock these slots randomly, but as frequently as possible. We tend to work on multiple orders at a time so that we can assembly line the construction of the diapers, so you might see multiple custom fitted or AIO listings going up in one day.

We will also continue to stock our Etsy store with print fitteds, plain AIOs, and embroidered diapers. Sewing in-stock items is an important outlet for our personal creativity so we usually have items destined for our Etsy store in progress while we work through customs. Once we are caught up with the current wait list we will start listing slots through our Etsy store.

As a mom of 4 girls I constantly struggle when trying to make a diaper suitable for a boy. Selecting fabric and embroidery for boys is often left to Amy because I cannot put myself into that “mom of boy” reality. It’s so foreign to me. I couldn’t even tell you what themes I would like if I had a boy. Would I like trucks? Boats? Animals? What? And then ….. Amy made this amazing embroidered velour diaper.

It was then and there that I had the revelation that if I had a boy, THIS would be his diaper. THIS diaper would be my favorite and THIS diaper is the epitome of the word “boy” to me.

Unfortunately, I don’t think having this revelation has helped put me in “boy mom” reality but I’m thankful to have a job that challenges me to step outside of my “girly” arena every once in a while.

My recreated AIO:

This custom order was a lot of fun to work on. The customer ordered a mixture of knit prints and solid velour diapers so I got to play with a lot of different fabrics while sewing these. They all came out beautiful but I am definitely partial to the all velour diapers.

Nothing motivates me to sew more than a clean sewing room, a sunny day, and new fabric. I have all three of those today, so as far as I am concerned, the day couldn’t get any better. I bought these gorgeous prints to make some summer clothes for my girls but so many of them would make amazing diapers!