Bum sweaters

The largest Bummi diaper wraps we have are the ones Amy is wearing now. There’s room in the waist, but I think she’ll grow out of the rise in a few months. I saw some knitted wool soakers through the WordPress.com Tag Surfer, and thought I’d look around for patterns — I was especially interested in finding patterns for wraps instead of pull-ons.

I found this great nicely organized links list.

There are two different free patterns for crocheted wool wraps, but I don’t crochet.

There is one pattern for purchase for a knitted wool wrap (scroll down several patterns), which looks great, but would require buying the pattern, buying the yarn (and maybe needles if I don’t have the right size already), and doing all the work.

Then I came across patterns for using an old wool sweater in various ways. One uses the sleeves to make longies (a soaker with long legs). Others cut a triangle out of the front and fold it up to make a pull-on soaker.

I happen to have a wool sweater I almost never wear, so I decided to make the pants (cute and very easy, although I didn’t measure the length; they might be too long but that’s fairly easily remedied).

Then I experimented with making two wraps from the front and back of the sweater. I cut a shape similar to the Bummis wraps, but larger. On one, I sewed on two buttons. I put it on Amy; it’s way too big for her now, but by ignoring the buttons, folding over the front panel and wrapping the wings across each other, it fits. For the next one, I sewed a little elastic into the legs, which was really tricky. I thought it would be easier to zigzag the elastic right to the fabric instead of making a casing, but it wasn’t.

All three projects, combined, took less than three hours. Much quicker (for me) than knitting from scratch. Not as cute, not as fitted, but good enough.

And they’re soft, with a nice texture, with no crinkly noises.

Here are pictures! The first three are front, side, and back of the first bum sweater.