How to make cloth diapers for a baby doll

Leah’s 3rd birthday is at the end of the month, and we got her a Baby Alive doll to go with the IKEA bed that I painted earlier this week.   Is it just me, or is Baby Alive a strange name for a doll?  At least she’s a cute doll that kind of resembles Leah when she was a baby.

Just like the IKEA bed, I have plans to make some accessories for this doll, which started today by making her some cloth diapers.  And check out how cute they turned out in the photos below!  If only there were more hours in the day I would make a whole wardrobe for this little doll:

This is the Baby Alive doll I got for Leah.

Tutorial: How to make cloth diapers for a baby doll

These diapers will fit a Baby Alive doll, a Cabbage Patch Kid baby doll, as well as many other dolls and small stuffed animals.  To make these Baby Alive cloth doll diapers you will need:

• 1/4 yard of fleece (or a 9″x11″ scrap if you are only making one)
• 1/4 yard of flannel (or a 9″x11″ scrap if you are only making one)
• 6″ of self adhesive Velcro strips (mine were just from the dollar store)
• One print out of the pattern piece (doll diaper pattern here)
  
• Note: If you would like to make No Sew Cloth Diapers for a Baby Doll, only cut out one pattern piece from the fleece and skip ahead to where the Velcro gets attached.  Make sure your fleece will hold it’s shape (or just use felt).  These will go together super fast if you are in a hurry!

I had some leftover polar fleece from when I made the sleep sack for Kate  (sleep sack tutorial is here) , so I used that for the inside of the diaper.  And for the outside, I bought some small pieces of a few different fun flannel patterns.

Pin the paper pattern to the fabric, and cut out one piece of fleece and one piece of flannel:

With right sides together, pin the flannel and the fleece pieces together:

Sew around the entire diaper, leaving a couple inches open at the back to turn it right side out:

Trim the corners being careful not to snip your stitches:

Turn it right side out:

Use the end of your seam ripper (or anything else that’s pointy) to push out the corners from the inside to help get nice neatly shaped corners:

Fold in the section of fabric at the back of the doll diaper that was left open and pin it in place:

Stitch across the entire back of the doll diaper close to the edge to close the opening:

Separate your Velcro – you’ll need different lengths of the soft and the scratchy parts.  Cut a 6″ strip of the soft part of the Velcro and attach it to the front of the diaper:

Cut two 2″ pieces of the scratchy part of the Velcro, and attach them to the tabs on the inside of the back of the diaper:

Pull the back diaper tabs around to the front, and you have a baby doll cloth diaper for a Baby Alive doll!

I made six cloth doll diapers with different flannel patterns and two different shades of fleece for the inside of each diaper.  They are so fun, I just can’t wait to give them to Leah!

Baby Alive looks so much cuter with these diapers!  These are just like cloth diapers for real babies!  (other than not being water proof… minor detail…)

These diapers also fit a baby Cabbage Patch Kid doll and probably some of our other dolls and stuffed animals.  Do Cabbage Patch Kid dolls not have yarn hair anymore?  Or is it just because this is a baby Cabbage Patch Kid doll?

Check out how cute this Cabbage Patch Kid baby doll is in her new cloth diaper:

And here is Baby Alive modelling her new diapers.  So sad that these have to be hidden away for another few weeks until Leah’s birthday!