How to Replace Elastic in a Pocket Diaper

You're chugging along enjoying your cloth diaper journey. You have a system that works, a wash routine that combats stinkies, and you smile at your little one's fluffy bum. Then one day while folding diapers or in the midst of a change you pull out a diaper and find that it's spring has sprung. Shot elastic is normal for cloth diapers that have seen lots of use. Your water, detergent, dryer, toddler pee, etc can all wreck havoc on the elastic in your diapers. There's a market for used diapers even with the elastic shot, people often like to get a deal and replace the elastic and put those babies back into action. However, if you're handy with needle and thread you can easily bring your cloth diapers back to life all on your own. You will need: thread elastic seam ripper sewing machine scissors you're handy dandy self My 4 year old has been potty trained for a while now, but he still has nights where the occasional oops happens. I'm still washing diapers for the babe in diapers, so we keep a couple pockets in the rotation for big brother. He's a lummox and we only have a few that still fit him. One of them has the elastic dying on us, so we're going to use it as our demo today. Enter our FuzziBunz perfect size pocket in Large. It's white and boring I know. The elastic is going to give out completely any day now.

First, we're going to take our seam ripper and carefully undo the stitches along the legs and the back.

Then we turn it inside out to find the elastic inside and carefully pick the stitches taking down the elastic. You may want to use a marker to note where the ends were sewn, but it should be obvious.

If you have another diaper with intact elastic you can use it to gauge your elastic length. In this case we're using 3/8" elastic; 8" long for the legs and 6" for the back. We'll sew the leg elastics back in using the old tack down points as our guide. And sewing the elastic to the seam allowance edge.

Flip your diaper back to the right side out. Now we stitch back along the lines where we ripped out the stitches. I start a couple inches back into the stitches that are still in tact, remembering to back stitch at the start. As you go down the leg you'll have to pull really tight to keep the elastic taught and be careful not to stitch your elastic in the process. Continue a couple inches into the intact stitches and back stitch to secure. Repeat on the other leg and the back elastic.

Tada your diaper is back in business!

Blogged by Samantha of Turk & Bean, also find her on Facebook and at her blog, Cornfed Crunchy.