Refreshing Cloth Diapers - Putting on Snaps

Now, as some of you may know, cloth diapers do not last forever. Because of this they sometimes need a facelift. :-) My BumGenius pocket diaper were not bought new. I got them for between $12-15 a diaper at a big used children stuff sale. So, after about 6 months of on and off use and 2 months of solid use the diapers are starting to fall apart in the velcro department. I personally am not a huge fan of velcro, but I do feel that it does have its place in the cloth diaper world. Velcro works great when it is new, and is an excellent option for tiny babies simply because they do not hold still for diaper changes as well as older infants. But, once the velcro wears out it has to be replaced. I decided because of the velcro was wearing out on my pocket diapers that I would try and change the velcro and refresh my diaper stash. Now, BumGenius sells diaper refreshing kits, but these do not include the velcro strip on the front of the diaper and the ones I had were completely ruined and pilled. So, I opted to just try and figure out how to fix them myself. :-)

I started by pulling off all of the velcro pieces on the diaper, here is the comparison of the diaper with velcro and the diaper without velcro, and also the pieces of velcro I took off the diaper.


After I accomplished that I did some test runs in my mind and I also did some consulting with my mom on how I was going to get velcro back onto the diaper without ruining it completely. I looked at getting fabric glue and gluing the velcro on then hand sewing it to the front panel and tabs, I looked at just sewing the velcro on with my sewing machine, I looked at not removing the front panel and hoping that it would just work to replace the side tabs... You get the idea. I was not really happy with any of these options because any one of them could completely ruin the outer PUL (polyurethane laminate) layer and make the diaper unusable. Once I got to the craft store (I personally like Hobby Lobby because they always have an online coupon) I looked at what they had for all of these options. Now, I have 5 of these diapers I need to fix, so I wanted something that was not going to be expensive, but be able to last a very long time (or at least for two more kids). To my surprise the velcro was not cheap and I could not find the right size. So I kept looking down the isle for more ideas on how to fix the diaper that was now unusable because it had no velcro on it. :-) I ran across the Babyville Boutique brand on my way out of the particular isle I was in. Babyville Boutique sells PUL fabric, plastic snaps, velcro, fold over elastic, and everything you would need for making cloth diaper covers or anything waterproof and baby. One of their items is snap pliers and plastic snaps. Since I had a 40% off coupon I decided to go ahead and try changing the diapers from velcro to snaps.
Once I got home I looked at the other Cotton Babies diaper items that I had in the house. One of my favorite items that I have is the Flip diaper cover, and after turning both the Flip cover and the 3.0 pocket inside-out I found something interesting.


They are both of the same. So, I just copied the snap pattern from the Flip cover and put it on the pocket diaper.
After following the directions on the snap pliers and putting on all of the snaps I have a diaper that should work for another couple of kids!


Now, this was a very easy process once I got all of the pieces figured out. The total project cost me about $22 and took me 45 min (but most of that time was figuring out how to use the snap machine :-D). For me this was more cost effective than doing the refresher kits because of how bad my diapers were getting.

If you have any questions about more details on what I did please ask!

~ Kym

Todays Verse: Matthew 5:10