Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Converting Bumgenius to snaps


Yes, I'm writing another post about cloth diapers. Yes, I'm still in love with them. :)

So, originally I bought 6 Bumgenius one size diapers (from Kelly's Closet). I think when I was choosing my first diapers I was a little unsure about snaps. I thought the closer to disposables, the better they would work. So I chose velcro. Because I only had 6 diapers I washed them every day and it was winter so I dried them in the dryer. After a few months the velcro was looking worn and it wasn't long before the velcro was just falling apart. As I added more diapers to my stash I set these aside to repair some day. Well that day had finally come for these lucky diapers!


I found instructions here on how to convert Bumgenius to snaps. I got snap pliers and 200 snaps from KAMsnaps.com for about $30. If you want them to look really nice, after you remove all the velcro you can use a sweater shaver to get rid of all the pilling and snags that the velcro caused. I know I'm nuts.


The tutorial shows how to make a little template to mark where to put the snaps. I didn't do that, I just laid my ruler over the diaper like in the picture above (after the velcro has been removed). I could center it really nicely this way and marked about 1 inch down every inch across.


Putting the snaps on the tabs is pretty easy with the pliers, but the snaps on the front are much harder. You can get to the snaps by starting at the pocket opening in the back and feeding all of the liner fabric into the pliers. This is definitely pushing the limit on how much fabric can fit into the pliers and it gets hard to maneuver the pliers and the snap pieces, but it is doable.

Update: You don't really have to feed all that fabric into the pliers, just get the snap pieces into place and clamp the pliers around all of it! Super easy, it just took me a few diapers to realize it!!


The end result is a great diaper that Leo can once again wear. I just hope that's a washable crayon ;)

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5 comments:

sara said...

great job! when we tried cd'ing, i started out with bg's too. the velcro caused a rash on both my kiddos. so, i sold the dipes. had i known how to do this...
(i'm still too lazy!)

Mimi-n-Moe's Mom said...

great job salvaging what you have and making it work for you!

impressive!
~karen :)
hope we see you next friday!

Aimee said...

Good for you for doing the washable diaper thing. I feel so guilty for using disposables and wish my kids would just be potty trained already!

Cute blanket in the background. Did you make it?

Maggie said...

Sara-
The bumgenius velcro tabs rub against Leo's belly and leave red spots. I stopped putting him to bed in those dipes and only use fuzzibunz one size at night now.

Aimee-
I'm sure your kiddos will be potty trained soon ;) I'm in no hurry to start working with Leo on potty training. I'm just really not looking forward to all that!!

Maggie said...

Oh, the beautiful blanket was made by my beautiful mom :)