Making your own cloth diapers for babies & toddlers, the easy way.

Making your own cloth diapers is as simple as folding a T-shirt, flour sack towel or receiving blanket and attaching it to baby.

Making your own cloth diapers doesn’t have to involve sewing, it doesn’t have to involve going out and buying elastic, snaps and extra strength thread.

All you need is to know which fabrics absorb liquid (for the absorbent part of the cloth diaper) and which fabrics repel liquid (for the water-resistant cover of the cloth diaper).

If you want help figuring out how many cloth diapers you need check out my article

Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you) from qualifying purchases made through those links. * Indicates an affiliate link

Making cloth diapers from household materials

There are tons of common household items that work great as cloth diapers, and whatever your plans are for your cloth diapering journey, knowing at least the basics about cloth diapering with these items will probably come in handy.

Even if you plan on just buying regular cloth diapers from a shop or manufacturer, I personally have had MANY situations where for whatever reason I had an angry, poopy baby and no diapers.

In those moments the knowledge that I have about folding cloth diapers and cloth diapering materials turns an emergency situation into a slightly inconvenient one.

Here are some common household items that can be used for cloth diapering

• Old T-shirts
• Flour sack towels
• Extra Receiving blankets
• Extra burp cloths
• Old Cotton or flannel bedding
• Baby wash clothes
• Fleece blankets (for water-resistant covers & stay-dry liners)

Great video from Jess is Blessed on YouTube about making no-sew fleece covers

You can also buy cloth diaper covers from most retailers for $5-$10 each, sometimes even less.

T-shirts, flour sack towels, receiving blankets and cut up old bedding can be either folded around baby or pad-folded, I highly suggest knowing the basics of both methods.

Burp cloths and baby wash clothes (assuming they are made of an absorbent material) are too small to be used by themselves as a cloth diaper, but can be folded up in the the bigger items to add absorbency.

In the next section of this article there is a link to a playlist on YouTube where I look for items I could possibly use for cloth diapering and demonstrate how I would fold them.

Video below has a story and demonstration of one occasion where I had to use my emergency cloth diapering skills using a very easy fold for folding a cloth diaper around baby.

Emergency cloth diapers

Emergencies are scary, especially when you have small children/babies, power outages, snowstorms, roads flooding, or maybe something like your car breaks down and you can’t go to the store, are all situations that cause a lot of stress.

Even if you use disposables and have a subscription for them to be delivered, if the roads are blocked, you aren’t getting diapers.

I cannot imagine being a parent in this situation, I was a parent of 3 kids under 4 all in cloth diapers with no power for a week and trying to save as much as possible to buy a new house.

So, every day I hauled creek water in a bucket over to a big blue tote and hand-washed all our laundry, including cloth diapers.

But, I was already using cloth diapers and was familiar with handwashing & hang-drying , so while it was extra work I knew what to do, which took an emergency situation and turned it into an annoyance.

While you can also use any of the materials in the above section as emergency cloth diapers, I feel these items are more difficult to clean and actually use on a baby.

So this is a list of items that absorb well and could be made to work, they just wouldn’t be the easiest to use or my first choice if I had any of the above options on hand.

• Bath towels (adult & baby sized towels)
• Wash cloths
• Dish rags
• Fleece jackets (for water-resistant cover)

Here is the playlist on YouTube of my series Armageddon cloth diapers where I go room by room in my house looking for items that could by used for cloth diapering in an emergency situation, I also demonstrate folding the diapers.

Extremely cheap cloth diapers

Walmart, Amazon, and many other stores have pretty affordable cloth diapers available, however, if a brand new, ready to use cloth diaper is only selling for $2, I personally would really question the quality of the cloth diaper.

I do have Alva baby cloth diapers that I purchased brand new for around $5, off of Amazon that have been going strong for 5 years on 4 babies.

Alva cloth diapers at happybeehinds.com

With just a quick search for cloth diapers on Amazon today I found a pack of 6 cloth diapers for $19.99, that’s $3.33 per cloth diaper!

Cloth diapers on amazon.com

I also have an Elf pocket cloth diaper that I just recently purchased brand new on sale for $2.80! That’s about $90.00 for 32 pocket cloth diaper covers!

So far I really like the Elf cloth diaper, but I haven’t had it very long so I can’t say how well it will hold up over time.

List of cloth diapers that I have tried and liked for under $10.00 a piece

• Alva baby happybeehinds.com
• Elf happybeehinds.com
• Mama Koala happybeehinds.com

Do use caution when buying very inexpensive cloth diapers as sometimes the price is a direct reflection of the quality.

Cheap & simple way to start cloth diapering

If I wanted to start cloth diapering very cheaply I would start with gifted receiving blankets, most people get at least some receiving blankets as gifts for a new baby.

Receiving blankets are pretty much identical to flat cloth diapers, which are 1 layer of absorbent fabric in a square shape.

I would not go out and buy new receiving blankets since they are probably more expensive than just buying regular flat cloth diapers.

Receiving blankets $3.00-$4.00 – Flat cloth diapers (cotton) $2.00-$3.50

If I didn’t have enough receiving blankets to fully cloth diaper my baby (24-36 for a newborn, 2x+ for older babies) I personally would buy a set of flat cloth diapers, they’re cheap, easy to hand-wash, easy to hang-dry and super customizable.

If you want a cheap cloth diaper with less folding, prefolds are a great option as well.

Greenmountaindiapers.com and Clothdiaper.com* are my 2 favorite shops for flats, prefolds and cloth diaper covers, they are really focused on simple, functional and affordable.

Cloth diaper shops also have sales every few months or seconds sales (Items with a minor cosmetic defect that does not effect function) these are when you can find really awesome deals.

Thirsties cloth diapers have seconds quality items on their website all the time, I highly suggest you check that out if you’re interested in their brand Thirstiesbaby.com

There is also absolutely nothing wrong with buying used cloth diapers, if you want to learn more about that check out my article

For tips on handwashing cloth diapers check out my YouTube playlists from the Flats & handwashing challenge where I hand-washed and hang-dried my cloth diapers for an entire week.

Resources

Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you) from qualifying purchases made through those links. * Indicates an affiliate link

Elf cloth diapers at happybeehinds.com

Alva cloth diapers at alvababy.com

To get your alvababy cloth diapers faster try ordering from happybeehinds.com when you order direct from alvababy they have to come all the way from china.

Mama koala cloth diapers at happybeehinds.com

Cloth diapers on amazon.com

Amazon Warehouse at amazonwarehouse.com

Thirsties seconds shop at Thirstiesbaby.com

Snappis at clothdiaper.com*

Flat cloth diapers at clothdiaper.com*

Flat cloth diapers at greenmountaindiapers.com

Prefold cloth diapers at clothdiaper.com*

Prefold cloth diapers at greenmountaindiapers.com

Walmart flour sack towels at walmart.com