Onesie Hack for Cloth Diaper Moms!

 Hello! I wanted to share a neat trick I came up with for cloth diapering. 

When you're shopping for baby clothes, especially in the newborn phase, pretty much all you can find is onesies. I did manage to find one newborn size t-shirt with Thorin, but that was it. The problem with onesies is that they fit snugly over the bum, which doesn't leave much room for a cloth diaper. I guess I don't know what other cloth diapering moms do (I've actually never met another one in person), but my husband and I always stuck a finger in Thorin's diaper to see if it was wet - if he was wearing a onesie snapped over the diaper and pants on top of that (which was typical, considering we live in Alaska and it's usually a bit chilly), then we had a lot of fabric to wiggle through before getting to the diaper. 

But even when Thorin wasn't in cloth diapers, it was generally just easier to change him if he was in a t-shirt and pants. When he hit about six months, it became much more common to find t-shirts, so we quit messing with onesies altogether. 

With Rosalie, I knew we weren't going to waste time with disposable diapers at all (we had tried with Thorin in the beginning, but his skin was so sensitive I just caved in and bought newborn cloth diapers after a month). Being much more experienced with cloth diapers the second time around, I knew I wanted t-shirts instead of onesies.

A mom of one of my fifth graders donated two kitchen trash bags full of baby girl clothes to me when she found out I was having a girl. She had recently gotten pregnant unexpectedly (her youngest was my fifth grader) but lost the baby and couldn't handle keeping the clothes around. I ended up donating most of the two bags (they just weren't my style), but I kept quite a few of the onesies because they were all newborn size, and I wanted to test out my idea.

Basically, I cut off all the bottoms of the onesies and turned them into t-shirts. Here's an example!

It was a little harder than I expected it to be, for a few reasons. First of all, the cheaper onesies (like Gerber, for example) were very thin and extremely stretchy, which made hemming them difficult without a stabilizer (which you know I didn't use because me = lazy). In addition, I hadn't cleaned my machine since making the puff quilt, and the really thin onesies were getting tangled up in the feed dogs and having holes ripped in them. 

After destroying 2 onesies, I caved in and cleaned my machine - and thank goodness, because that thing was GROSS. It needed it. 

I also came up with a few tricks to make it easier.

The first two that I destroyed, I cut the bottoms off before I started hemming (seems logical, right?). However, because the onesies are so small, doing a typical 5/8" inch seam just looked weird - you need a very narrow seam. How narrow? IDK - ya'll know I'm lazy and just eyeball everything. Probably more like 1/4", but of course I didn't measure. You also need to use a zig zag stitch to keep the stretch (or use a serger, if you have one, which I don't), which makes the seam look even larger. But when you've cut off most of the fabric, it's more prone to twisting and warping (due to the stretch factor) and getting caught or popping out from under the needle because you don't have much to work with. 

To solve this problem, I simply turned the onesies inside out, folded the bottoms inward, and hemmed them first. When you fold the bottoms over, check to make sure your sides are even by folding the onesie in half and checking that the hem below the hips is even. You probably should pin or clip, but I didn't. AFTER hemming, I trimmed the seams. Viola!

When you turn them inside out, be careful to hold any long sleeves. I pulled the sleeves through the neck hole just to make sure I didn't accidentally catch them in the seam when I was hemming; I am NOT speaking from experience, thankfully! But I could easily foresee that happening to a tired, pregnant mom!

I did notice that brand/style of onesie made a HUGE difference in how easy this was. Generally speaking, the Gerber onesies were the absolutely worst to work with, due to them being extremely thin with a lot of stretch. All of the onesies I ruined were Gerber ones. 

Carters onesies were the easiest most of the time - I noticed that there was a decent amount of variation in the thickness of the Carters brand, but the thicker ones were the easiest to work with because they were less likely to get tangled in the feed dogs (even after cleaning my machine!). 

The picture below shows a Gerber onesie on top (the pink polka dots) and a Carters onesie on the bottom (the animals). You can see the seam on the Carters onesie looks much nicer; the Gerber onesie was more prone to tugging and pulling, which created some minor holes/tangles in the thread. Not a huge deal overall, but if you were gifting these, I would opt only for thicker cotton.

The super cheap onesies from China that we all buy off Wish were a pain, too - not necessarily because of the fabric, but because the designs were always printed too low! I'm sure you've experienced that annoyance; the picture or words on the onesie are printed so close to the crotch that it's hidden when they're wearing pants, right? Well it poses a problem when you try to turn the onesie into a t-shirt, too, because the design goes below the hip seam. So you either cut off part of the design or have weird hems around the sides. I didn't take a picture of one of those onesies, but now that I'm writing this, I guess I should have just to show my frustration.

Even with the struggles, I am SO happy with all these onesies - in about two hours, including cleaning my machine and ruining the first two, I turned about 25 onesies (successfully) into t-shirts, and now I have a complete newborn shirt collection! Most of the onesies were either recycled from my son or given to me, too, so all it cost me was two hours and some thread! 

If you try this, I highly recommend starting with a cheap, plain onesie first, just so you get a feel for it and don't risk ruining the most adorable one. You could either buy a pack of plain white ones (that you can either tie-dye or add applique/Cricut vinyl to later!) or get some from a thrift store, if you don't happen to have any. I'd say after 3-4 successes, I got pretty confident and quit making mistakes (except uneven seams because, you know, I'm lazy). But since these are newborn shirts and nobody is really going to investigate your seams anyway, who cares??

Good luck with your onesie/t-shirt transformations! Show me some pictures - I'd love to see!! I plan to get some more onesies (oddly, I've noticed onesie packs are cheaper than packs of t-shirts for babies...?) and tie-dye them, or add applique/vinyl. Can't wait to create!!