5 colors on Friday!

The dry spell has ended! Friday April 9 at noon, all 5 of the new solid color Solo Flyers will be available and should be in supply from now on.

Next week be on the lookout for Wrapper covers (side snap).

Prints? Well, as it turns out, the reason for the delay is that laminators are changing to more earth-friendly ways of processing fabric into waterproof PUL. So that's good, right? I'll have prints in stock as soon as I can but still no estimate on arrival.

Hope you are getting some nice weather where you are. Our tulips just opened and look so pretty. Happy spring!

Short and sweet --

Newborn covers stocking Friday 4/2 at noon at Bitty Fluff. New prints! That's all, folks.

The waiting is the hardest part

It's been a while since I've posted -- feels like I've been waiting forever for my next round of Solo Flyers. It's actually only been three weeks since the last stocking, when I stocked what would usually be a whole month's worth of diapers. I was delighted that they sold out in 3 days!

However, it's left the store mostly empty for a while and I apologize for not anticipating the demand. I'm pleased to say, though, that there are a whole lot more coming, and in future I don't think we'll have this kind of empty store situation.

In about 2 weeks I should have the new colors in hand, so without further ado, here they are:



These are the winning colors from the poll I posted a while back. The top girly color was violet, the favorite green was spring, and the best dark was black. Sky and mango as you know were the other winners and will continue forward.

Okay, so what about prints, which we all love? The main US company that does the lamination for just about every diaper company has been undergoing a reorganization, and without prior warning they put everyone's orders on hold for a month. This has delayed the new prints and I am (sigh) still waiting on the fabric.

Covers! Let's not forget these. I have Wrappers (side snap) in six colorways coming soon (probably about three weeks) and Snappers (front snap) to follow after that. Look for newborn covers next week (April 2) at Bitty Fluff.

It's a little like being pregnant, knowing all this lovely new fluff is in the works, and just waiting...and waiting...for it's arrival.

Solo Flyer Friday

The first batch of Solo Flyers are ready to go (on Friday March 5 at noon eastern) and they look great! We've started with sky blue and mango orange. A while back I asked for votes on favorite solid PUL colors. Sky blue was the winner among all the shades of blue, and mango was the winner among all the yellow-orange-red shades. So those are the colors we've chosen for starters. Fun colors that work for either gender!

So, you know how I like to give things away? Let's kick off this stocking with some freebie goodness. I'm going to do a drawing for one in sky and one in mango, in size medium (the most popular size). Put your name in between noon Friday and noon Sunday (EST) to see if you win!

Now, I figure one of the first questions I'm going to hear is, "when will you have more colors?" I've definitely got more in the works but it will be a few weeks. We're taking this one step at a time, making sure we do things right. "And prints?" Yes! I have yards and yards of print PUL on order, it all just takes a while, realistically probably May before I have fabric in hand and sewn up.

Many thanks for bearing with me through all these transitions. Starting a small business can be a wild ride (kind of like parenthood), so I'm glad you've stuck around to watch. And I really appreciate each and every order.

Cover lovers, come on in

Let's start with the free stuff. There are two free-for-shipping giveaways this weekend at fishnoodles - a pink hippos cover for girls and a yellow garden bugs cover for boys. Size small, so if you are expecting or have a new baby, put your name in and see if you win!


On the new baby theme, 12 newborn covers are available Friday the 26th at noon over at Bitty Fluff.


And finally, 12 new solid covers and 16 side snap print covers at fishnoodles, noon on the 26th.

A note about future stockings ~ If you are thinking of picking up a cover, this may be the last stocking of covers for some time. Also, if you have been thinking about a custom Solo Flyer stash, I have left 1 small, 1 medium, and 3 size large slots (for a minimum 10 diapers each slot), with customs being phased out by the end of March. As I mentioned previously, joint pain in my hands and wrists is going to take me away from sewing as a primary activity. I will be looking to have all fishnoodles products made for me, and the process of getting covers made might take a while, especially with my goal of offering top notch fit and quality.

Stay tuned as fishnoodles evolves!

My visit to the sewing factory

Well, folks, since I have no new stock this week, thought I'd share my recent trip with you. Most of us rarely if ever get to go inside a factory anymore (liability, terrorism and all), and probably most people have no idea how sewn products are actually made. I had some idea from doing lots of research on getting diapers made but still had never seen a sewing factory in person.

The sewing factory that is working on the Solo Flyers is located in the US, and the workers are proud of what they do. The company president is a woman, and she was familiar with cloth diapers too! Let me show you around...

First, fabric is spread on long, long tables (like maybe 50 feet...I'm bad at estimating), and it is spread multiple plies thick. They work on several different orders on these long tables at any one time. Then the cutters use a vertical electric blade to slice through the thick stack of fabric to cut out the pattern pieces. I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but the gentleman in front is wearing a chain metal glove to protect his hand from the blade - that's how sharp it is.


Next the cut pieces are loaded into tubs (those brown containers in the pic below) and sent to the stitchers. As you can see, they work in a large, airy, well-lit space, and each stitcher has her or his own station. No child labor here!


Finally, the sewn goods go to a quality control table for inspection and packing.

It was a lot of fun to meet the good people who will be working on my project. They will be starting a small run of diapers next week, to learn this new-to-them product before scaling up to a larger batch. I like this careful approach and attention to detail and I will be so excited to share these diapers with you!

I'm alive :)

So glad to be home from the hospital! Nothing makes you appreciate your family like a major illness - it's been said a thousand times but really is true. I know I need to give myself time to rest and recover. Right now, I don't know when I'll be stocking again but I do know it will be at least 2 weeks (doctors orders) which puts us into March already! I'm really grateful for everyone's kind comments and well wishes.

I'll tell you a bit of what happened with me. I went in Monday morning for a gyn exam - I had been having some problems and the doc decided to do a uterine biopsy there in the office. No biggie, I was fine, but that night started having cramps. By 4 am the pain and chills were so severe I had to ask dh to take me to the ER. It felt like the last stages of labor. They gave me morphine - I didn't know morphine and I don't get along. It made me so nauseated. Later, the next pain med they tried did the same thing, so I was vomiting up everything for a whole day.

The results of all the testing was that the biopsy had, oddly enough, introduced a vicious intestinal bacteria into a nice warm environment where it could grow and try and take me over. I had IV antibiotics for a few days and that brought it under control. I have a couple different antibiotics I'm taking several times a day and other then that I just have to rest. And believe me, not a problem. I am super tired. It's taken me long enough to write this, so I'm off.

Just one more thing - hug those kiddos, they'll pull you through in the worst moments. My husband stopped by the hospital with cards my kids had made, and it was like, wow, they really do miss me :) Take care everyone!