Vicki and Vashti talk about their favourite type of cloth nappy, fitted. The all-round nappy with so many applications.
Transcription: Why fitted's are awesome
Andrew: How are you doing, Vashti?
Vashti: Good thanks Andrew, how are you today?
Andrew:Excellent, excellent.
Vashti: You nearly caught me then.
Andrew: I did, I did. I was like oh, out of the blue. Because you are sitting down in front of a mic, so you knew it was coming.
Vashti: Yeah. I was just expecting you to do Vicki first, for some reason.
Andrew: Oh, for some strange reason. No, she gets the odd ones, you get the even ones. How are you doing, Vicki?
Vicki: Still tired, actually. It’s been a month now and I’m still tired.
Andrew: Actually that was next month.
Vicki: Oh. [laughter] Bugger.
Andrew: That was next month you’re still tired.
Vicki: I’m still going to be tired in a month’s time, so I’m tired.
Andrew: People aren’t going to get that until the next episode.
Vicki: That is funny.
Andrew: But we do have, actually we can actually, we can actually advertise our next episode.
Vicki: Yes, we can because we…
Andrew: We’ve never done this before, where we’ve actually recorded episodes out of order before.
Vicki: Yeah, so that’s why you really confused me.
Andrew: Next week, next month we have a fantastic episode with Jenna.
Vashti: It’s going to be fun.
Andrew: It was fun. I mean it’s going to be fun.
Vicki: Be warned.
Vashti: There was some interesting comments.
Andrew: Yeah.
Vashti: Wait for the bath comments.
Andrew: Lots of pee pee.
Vicki: Unless he removes them, because it was too much laughing. Maybe.
Andrew: Yeah no, actually I did think the other day maybe I should just speed the laughing up.
Vicki: Could do that.
Andrew: Because they speed videos up when it gets boring, so maybe I should just speed the laughing up.
Vicki: Yeah, there was a lot of laughing. A lot of laughing
Andrew: Ten seconds of laughing in five minutes.
Vicki: Well if you did… no you can’t because Jenna already speaks so fast.
Andrew: She does, she does. It’s funny though, we’ve got more kids than her and we don’t speak faster than she does.
Vicki: No.
Vashti: I think the third one you just sit there and go yeah, whatever.
Andrew: So today’s subject. Let me preface that by saying thank you to all our listeners. I haven’t actually given numbers recently because they did have a little bit of a dip when Covid took over the world.
Vashti: Really? That surprises me.
Andrew: Well people aren’t driving anywhere.
Vashti: Well that’s true. They’re at home.
Andrew: So they’re not tending to listen to podcasts. My personal podcast listening has gone down. I’m way behind on some of them. Actually I listened to a podcast the other day and I thought I’ll listen to their latest episode, and it as their last episode they recorded four months ago.
Vashti: Right, OK.
Andrew: Didn’t even know they stopped the podcast.
Vashti: Well there you go.
Andrew: They’ve been going for seven years though.
Vashti: That’s impressive. How long have we been going for now?
Andrew: Um, um, I’ll edit a number in later. We’ve been going for dot dot years.
Vashti: It’s over two years.
Andrew: I think we’re in our fourth year now.
Vashti: Fourth year?
Andrew: Yeah.
Vashti: Wow.
Vicki: Don’t think so.
Andrew: Yeah.
Vashti: So we’ve cracked the three year anniversary.
Vicki: No, because we’ve only been, we’re about to be in the warehouse three years in August, right. Well three years now, we’ve been in the warehouse. And we weren’t recording the podcast before we moved to the warehouse.
Vashti: Weren’t we?
Andrew: We were recording it.
Vashti: We were recording it at your house.
Vicki: Yeah, but I don’t think it was before we actually moved.
Andrew: No, I think we were recording in the house because we didn’t, the other warehouse there wasn’t enough space to set up for.
Vicki: Maybe. I don’t know.
Andrew: And actually I didn’t wan to record in the other warehouse because the other warehouse was noisy. Because it was a very industrial estate in the other warehouse.
Vashti: I’m pretty sure you were still in the old warehouse when we first started.
Vicki: Oh well we’re coming up for, actually it’s almost, does it matter that we put times on this? It’s almost the end of July, and we moved into the warehouse on the 1st of August.
Andrew: Well the…
Vicki: Three years.
Vashti: Wow.
Vicki: Yeah, three years.
Vashti: Wow. I can’t believe we’ve been recording for over three years. That’s impressive.
Andrew: The intros that I’ve got, I do a new intro every year, even if the information changes, I only do a new intro once a year, and I’ve got four intros sitting on my hard drive.
Vashti: There you go. Wow, see, goes to show how much attention I pay.
Andrew: That’s right. So today’s subject. Oh and yeah, thanks for listening. Even when we ramble about baths. Wait, that’s the next episode. Fitteds. This episode is entitled Why Fitteds are Awesome. So before we start, let’s get down on the recording what is a fitted? Describe a fitted to me, girls.
Vicki: You can, I’m so tired.
Vashti: A fitted nappy is shaped, so it goes on nice and easy. Generally it will have elastic in the back and the legs to from a nice, snug seal around the waist and the legs. But every layer is absorbent, so it needs a cover to go on over the top if you don’t want to end up with wetness coming out onto clothes and bedding and stuff like that.
Andrew: Or you don’t want to leave a snail trail.
Vicki: What?
Andrew: When the kids start crawling around on the carpet. Where’s my kid Just follow the trail.
Vicki: This is going to be worse than the one next month, isn’t it?
Vashti: OK.
Andrew: Is that really the first time I’ve said that?
Vicki: Yeah.
Vashti: Yeah.
Andrew: Really? I say that a lot, I thought that all the time. OK, so that’s a fitted.
Vicki: That’s not at all what I was thinking about. Never mind. Never mind, we’re not going there again.
Andrew: Works on wooden floors, doesn’t work on carpet.
Vicki: Yeah, no, stop.
Andrew: What’s up?
Vicki: Are you going tell me that you never knew that feet represented penis size, aren’t you?
Andrew: I don’t learn that until next month.
Vashti: Where we talk about penis soup.
Andrew: OK, so with or without a cover?
Vicki: Either.
Andrew: What do we prefer?
Vashti: You can do it either. Without a cover gives you a lot more breathability. It lets you know exactly when your baby has wet so you can change immediately as well. So I’ve got one of my nesties at the moment, she’s very keen, she’s doing elimination communication or EC without doing EC. So she’s not actually taking her baby to the toilet, but she’s changing immediately that she notices that her baby has wet. So she’s using fitteds without covers. And if her clothing gets wet, or her baby’s clothing gets wet, she doesn’t care, she just washes an entire outfit, so she’s happy with doing that. So because she just doesn’t want her baby sitting in a wet nappy, for any period of time at all.
Andrew: How many times is she changing nappies in an hour then? Is it more, is it less? More I suppose.
Vashti: Yeah, no, she changes the nappy probably once or twice an hour. So she’s slowed down, her baby has just gone out of newborn fitteds into once size fits most fitteds. She still fits a newborn fitted, but she’s finding a one size fits most fitted works better for her now. So she was changing a couple of times an hour or before and after sleeps and stuff, she was using a cover for sleeps.
Andrew: It seems like so much more work.
Vashti: But that’s what she wants, so…
Andrew: OK.
Vicki: You do you.
Andrew: Fair enough.
Vashti: And it’s interesting, she did come to me at one stage almost in tears, saying she had been on one of the forums and had been almost, it felt like she’d been attacked because she wasn’t using a cover.
Andrew: Wrong forum.
Vicki: But she’s the one doing the washing, she doesn’t care if her clothes get wet.
Vashti: Yeah, exactly, no. As I said, I turned around and said to her, you want to know when your little one is wet. If you’re changing clothes as well, you’re OK with that, aren’t you? And she goes yeah, I don’t care, I don’t mind washing. It’s like the washing machine does all the work. So I’m like, exactly, so what does it matter what people on a forum say?
Andrew: If you’re on a forum and everybody disagrees with you, then you’re on the wrong forum.
Vashti: Yeah, which is what she learned very quickly from that.
Vicki: Yeah, wrong tribe.
Vashti: Yeah, so but look, if you want to use a cover, that’s fine as well, you can use a cover.
Vicki: Most people use a cover.
Vashti: 99% of people do use a cover.
Vicki: I’ve heard of a lot of toddlers running around just in a fitted in the tropics, especially in the middle of summer. They’re just literally wearing a fitted nappy.
Vashti: A fitted nappy, because it’s so much more breathable, because it is just the fabric. And it’s the same as the old school flats, when people used to use old school flats, through summer when you were just hanging about the back yard and stuff, it was just the flat.
Vicki: They’d just wear that.
Vashti: You didn’t use the pilchers over the top of it, and fitteds are the same. So you can use it without a cover. If you want to put clothes on over the top and don’t want to have to worry about washing clothes or going in the car and washing car seat covers and stuff, pop a cover over the top. You can use wool, you can use PUL or polyurethane laminate, TPU, thermoplastic laminate, you can use fleece. Any sort of cover will work.
Andrew: Glad wrap? Can you use glad wrap?
Vashti: I probably wouldn’t recommend glad wrap, but it would work. It’s sort of like putting a garbage bag on your child.
Andrew: Don’t get plastic near children.
Vashti: No, not recommended.
Andrew: So with the cover, if you want to use boosting you’re going to have to have a cover, aren’t you?
Vicki: If you’re boosting on the outside of the nappy. If you’re boosting on the inside of the nappy and you can get containment and you can get the nappy shut, no. We probably should stop talking about not using covers because 99% of people actually use covers with them.
Andrew: So boosting, you just do it under the cover.
Vicki: Yeah.
Vashti: So you pop the nappy on, so you get a beautiful snug fit. You pop whatever you’re boosting is on that nappy and then you pop the cover over the top.
Vicki: And if you’re worried about fit you can boost on the outside of the nappy, between it and the cover.
Andrew: And if you’ve got the right cover, you can get quite a bit of boosting in there too.
Vashti: Yeah, definitely.
Andrew: Is it good as a night nappy?
Vicki: Oh 100%, yeah, I would recommend nothing else than a fitted and a cover overnight.
Andrew: A fitted, a cover and a booster?
Vicki: Yeah, because you can boost it, because there’s so many different variations of how old is your baby? How long are they going to sleep? Are they feeding overnight, yada yada, so what capacity you need in a nappy is going to vary from child to child. So having a fitted gives you that versatility where you can basically make it as absorbent as you need it to, to make it last as long as you need it to. You know, some kids sleeping overnight is six hours, some kids sleeping overnight is 14 hours. That’s a massive difference in capacity.
Andrew: And the difference there is happy mother, not as happy mother.
Vicki: Yeah. My kids sleep through and I’m still tired.
Vashti: But you can also get dedicated night fitted nappies as well, so it’s not just about using your day fitted with boosting, you can get a night fitted which is designed to have more absorbency in it. It’s built slightly differently so it will last a lot longer.
Vicki: Thicker fabrics.
Vashti: And a lot higher GSM fabric as well and a lot more layers to soak everything up, that it needs to, to go 12 plus hours.
Andrew: Cool, and you’ve got the choice of putting a cover on that or not if you want, but obviously if it’s overnight you want a cover.
Vashti: For overnight, I would always recommend a cover, no matter what. It makes for a much more peaceful night. Because if clothing gets wet because they have out wet the nappy, then the whole house is going to be awake and you’ll be changing bedding.
Vicki: Or putting towels down, you wouldn’t be the first mother.
Vashti: No, there’s that. But as soon as you…
Andrew: That’s extra boosting.
Vicki: That’s it. Put a towel on the bed, yeah.
Vashti: As soon as you have to strip a baby in the middle of the night, you’re waking them up because you’re taking their clothes off and even in summer, you’re still adjusting their body temperature, because they’re going from having one layer on to having no layers on, to back to having layers on, and you’re moving them around. So yeah, if you don’t have to change your baby overnight, then don’t.
Vicki: Don’t.
Vashti: Because it means even if they’re waking for a sleep, they get back to sleep much quicker. Waking for a feed, sorry, not waking for a sleep.
Andrew: And snaps or no snaps?
Vashti: It’s personal preference.
Vicki: Same, same. It depends on the style of the nappy, the brand of the nappy. A fitted nappy just, as Vashti said, means that it’s a completely absorbent nappy.
Andrew: Because most people just do them up with the cover, don’t they? They don’t worry about the…
Vicki: No.
Vashti: No, people do them up with Snappies, with nappy pins, with Boingos, they have snap closures, they have Velcro closures. It really depends on the brand that you use.
Vicki: Yeah, it’s a style of nappy. There is nothing.
Andrew: OK, so we’ve got the category of fitteds. Do we split that category up with the type of fastener it uses?
Vicki: No.
Vashti: No, just a fitted nappy where it’s shaped, but every layer is absorbent.
Andrew: And the only thing that sets it apart is a fitted nappy just needs a cover.
Vicki: Yeah.
Andrew: If you could only have one style of nappy and you could have no other nappies, what would it be?
Vashti: It’s definitely a fitted, because it’s so versatile. I think I’ve got asked this once before in a live, and it’s because you can boost it on the outside to turn it into a night nappy. You can use it without a cover for hot, humid days, you can use it with a cover. And the cover can be super cute to make up the outfit, and stuff like that. There’s so many things you can do with a fitted. Depending on the brand that you choose, you can get your one size fits most that will go from birth and last you all the way through to toilet training, or you can buy sized fitteds as well. Itty does the small, medium large and extra large in their fitteds and they have a snap closure and little snap in inserts, so the shell of the fitted is shaped with snap closures and then it has an hourglass insert and a trifold that snaps onto the inside of it, so you can adjust how much absorbency you put inside the nappy and then if you need to, you can put more absorbency over the top. The Bubblebubs Bam Bam, and the Bigs, the Bubblebubs grown up, which is exclusive to us at Nest, you get to ultimate customability with that, because you fold it to exactly where you need, and because it doesn’t have any closures on it, you close it to exactly where you need as well. You can use your Snappy or your nappy pins or your Boingos on that to get the ultimate fit, every single time.
Andrew: So you were saying on another podcast, I think it’s the next one, that if snaps are too close, it just makes or breaks the nappy, because they just can’t get a good fit.
Vashti: Yeah, so with a snap, like because you have to do the nappy up to exactly where those snaps are, with a teeny, tiny bubby, if your baby needs to go halfway between a snap, then it can make or break the nappy, because it can be that tiny bit too tight, or that tiny bit too loose. If it’s too loose you’re going to get leaks, and if it’s too tight, you’re going to get marks, and you’re not going to like marks on your new baby. No parent wants to see marks on their brand new baby. So having that ultimate customability where you do it up with Velcro or another closure like your Snappies, your Boingos, your nappy pins, I feel like a broken record at the moment, saying those two things.
Andrew: Say them like a broken record.
Vashti: Yeah, that’s what I just did. Because I was saying Snappies, nappy pins, Boingos. I just said Snappies, Boingos, nappy pins.
Andrew: OK.
Vashti: Yeah, because if you’ve got that Velcro or you’ve got those separate closures, you get that ultimate fit. Velcro you can put exactly where you need at any time. Snappies and other closures, you can close the nappy up and then put the closures on over the top of that to get the ultimate fit. Whereas with snaps, yes, you have to go exactly where the snaps are. Once your baby has put on a little bit of chunk and is weighing a little bit more, and we normally find that’s around about that six-ish kilo mark, they’ve got enough weight around their legs and stuff, snaps aren’t such a bad thing. And by nine months, I found that your baby has got enough dexterity that they’re going to be opening the Velcro. Even with your disposables, that touch tape, it’s really easy to open for bubs from about nine or ten months. And Velcro on a nappy sounds really good as well, so snaps all the way. Once they’ve got a little bit of dexterity about them.
Andrew: Yeah, I remember the dark days of Bubblebubs where everything was Velcro and the kids would just tear it off.
Vashti: Yep, I still have those Bubblebubs all in ones.
Andrew: And they’ll do it front of you. They’ll do it in front of you, like, and they know it pisses you off. Sorry, they know it bugs you, does that sound better. They know it bugs you, so they just do it right in front of you.
Vashti: Wait until your 18 month old works out how to undo a side snapping nappy underneath the onesie, and pull it out of the onesie, while it’s full of poo.
Andrew: Wow, that’s impressive. Was that you or a customer?
Vashti: No, my son. Number three. Didn’t take the onesie off, didn’t unsnap the onesie, reached through his onesie to undo the snaps and then pulled it out the side of his onesie. So he was just running around in his onesie.
Vicki: Wow, that’s impressive.
Vashti: Yeah. I think he might have been around about 16 months. He was reasonable young. He was mobile, he was walking, but yeah, he wasn’t that old.
Andrew: Doesn’t really matter how old he was, he was in just as much trouble as he would have been if he was old.
Vashti: Yep. Like walking in and finding him sitting like Gollum up on top of my entertainment unit yesterday. He’d climbed up on top of the entertainment unit and was sitting there. I went, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner and I heard something fall over, and walked out from the kitchen, and there he is, because he knew he was in trouble because he’d knocked something over.
Andrew: Was that the television that fell over?
Vashti: No, thankfully. We’ve got one of the big, old entertainment units. Like really deep wooden ones with leadlight glass doors in it. And the big hole for the old style T.V., not lowline flat screens and stuff.
Andrew: We stuck ours up on the wall. Hung it like a picture.
Vashti: So I don’t have a T.V. in my entertainment unit. We don’t have a T.V. in our house. And I just, we’ve still got this entertainment unit because I’m in love with it. I don’t want to get rid of it, but I don’t know how to repurpose it.
Vicki: Good climbing toy.
Vashti: Apparently.
Andrew: Put it in the backyard, call it a treehouse.
Vicki: That’s the one.
Andrew: Nice. So do you have any favourite parts of, how many fitteds did we use? We used fitteds, didn’t we? Mostly at night time.
Vicki: No, actually… on Gabe we did.
Andrew: At night time.
Vicki: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually no, on the younger two, on Abbie, she was pretty much exclusively in the all in ones that I made, because that’s all I made at the time. I don’t actually think she was in anything but that, and it wasn’t until I had Bella that I discovered… you’ve got to remember how old are you, Abbie? Sixteen? Sixteen years ago there was next to nothing in the coth nappy market at all, so she was pretty much just wearing the original all in ones that I made. But by the time Bella came along four years later, there were a lot more styles.
Andrew: Yeah, it has come along way in 16 years.
Vicki: It has, it has.
Andrew: There were no stores, there weren’t very many brands.
Vicki: You know, fun fact, I was the first work at home Mum making an all in one in Australia.
Andrew: Were you?
Vashti: Really?
Vicki: Did you guys not know that? Yeah, my design, so fitteds were actually… all in ones weren’t really a thing. But yeah, I was the first work at home Mum making an all in one style.
Andrew: Because it was either flats or disposables, there were no choices.
Vicki: Yeah, well remember Lori’s nappies? Was it Lori? See this may even be before your time. They were fitted, they were all fitteds. I’m trying to go back, thinking of the Wee Ones and even Tot Spots. Tot Spots were pretty much the only commercial nappy you could get in Australia and they were really hard to get. They were a fitted. They were like similar to what are they now? The Bamboozles, they were made from cotton. There was, gosh, there were so few nappies. There’s very few brands that have actually been around as long as we have. Baby Beehinds.
Vashti: But see there were things like…
Vicki: Davina was only doing a fitted, she was only doing, it was called a Honey Pot.
Vashti: Baby bears did Honey Pot. It was just the Baby Beehinds fitted.
Vicki: No, it was not called that. She renamed it.
Vashti: Did she?
Vicki: Yeah, she did, because there was all controversy about it. It used to be called, it was something bee-ish, honey something.
Vashti: Can’t remember, because I had them, I had them for Braithe.
Vicki: They were hemp.
Vashti: There was a hemp version and a bamboo version.
Vicki: No, she only had the hemp. Way back in 2004, she started about six months before me, so way back in 2004, she only had the hemp, because bamboo wasn’t around.
Vashti: Because we didn’t get them until early 2006.
Vicki: Yeah, and that’s when the bamboo started to come out.
Vashti: She would have had the bamboo. And they were, we had the hemp version which had the beautiful rainbow stitching around the legs, and then the bamboo version…
Vicki: Did you ever see the coloured ones?
Vashti: The coloured, so there was purple, pink, green, blue and orange. Because I had all of it, plus plain white. But we had all of them. Except for the pink ones. For some reason I didn’t buy the pink ones for Braithe, but as soon as I found out that Mikayla was a girl, we got pink ones for her.
Vicki: I’m actually way back, way, way. So she had the similar to the…
Vashti: So this would have been when she was sewing them herself. Because she was commercially making them when I started with them.
Vicki: No, no, I’m way back when she was still, I remember her snapping them. I went over to her place and kind of eyed off her snap press, because she had a foot press and I didn’t. But then I wasn’t making snap nappies. Way, way, way, and who else? And Iddy. Now Sue was only making a fitted. Her first ever ones were the Boos. The first one that I tried was an all in one, because I actually thought that fitteds were too much work, which is really funny. So that’s why I made an all in one.
Vashti: Fitteds were too much work?
Vicki: We’re talking 16 year ago. I was, but OK, the first all in one I made, I made out of old repurposed towels. I’m pretty sure I had some towelling of some sort, and it had fleece. That’s it, no PUL, on nothing, and Abbie just peed straight through it. I’ve no idea why. They were kind of my first attempts. I wish I still had them actually. No PUL, no nothing. I learned very quickly, because I was pregnant at the time, and I learned very, very quickly how to make an all in one. But yeah, there were a few brands. It’s back in the Hyena days. There was, I wouldn’t say a lot, but there were people making, it was all work at home mum stuff. There were very, very, very few commercial brands around in 2003/2004 when I was pregnant.
Vashti: No, it would have been Impsy Bimpsy, Tot Spots, and Close parent wouldn’t even have been around then Close Parent started after then.
Vicki: It was all very much a cottage industry kind of thing and so I got the idea of the all in one from American forums, because there were moms making them over there. And they were using Molden Mills fleece which was not available over here, so that’s why I went with the fleece. Oh well this is nice and breathable. Yeah, no, it just didn’t work without PUL. But even getting the stock here, getting PUL. All of that sort of stuff, everything was coming out of America.
Vashti: When we were leaving down in Victoria, I was on maternity leave with Braithe still, so this would have been 2006. And our mothers group, we decided we would start making a few nappies. And our local markets, there was a fabric guy, and we talked to him about sourcing the PUL for us, and he’s like, yep, I can do, I know what it is. Because we showed him a Baby Beehinds PUL cover, and he goes yep, yep, I can get that. Next market rocked around, he had a great big roll of it for us. I just went and paid for it. Brent went and paid for it, and brought it back to the car, and I took one look and said “That’s not PUL”. Like, its like…
Vicki: Taffeta sort of stuff.
Vashti: It’s very thin. It’s almost a waterproof material, but it wouldn’t be. I had this massive roll of it that we’d already paid for. And he refused to refund us for it, and it was useless to us. So a couple of the girls used it to make chair covers for their dining room chairs, because their kids, it’s nice to put a nice chair cover over the top. So they got fabric and stitched this stuff to the cotton.
Vicki: But Fabrite was pretty much the only place you could get a decent… well actually any PUL. It was even before China was making your China Cheapies and all of that sort of stuff. It as such a cottage industry, very, very specific.
Vashti: It was. And I remember the first nappy I ever made was just trying to draw a bit of a pattern myself, and it ended up only big enough… I didn’t take into account seam allowance and all this sort of stuff, so it ended up being a doll’s nappy, a Cabbage Patch Kid’s nappy.
Vicki: I’ve got the opposite, because my sister had I suppose kind of like a fitted, but there was no elastic or anything that she had had for my niece, who’s now 21 or something like that, and I started with that as a pattern and ended up massive. Absolutely massive.
Vashti: I remember Mikayla was born 3580, so reasonable size, but she was very petite and this nappy that I made, it didn’t have snaps or Velcro on it or anything, so I was planning on using a Snappy, because it was pretty much a fitted.
Vicki: The first Bam Bam.
Vashti: But yeah, there was no way it would have gotten on her. It was just way too small. And I was doing this as well pregnant with Mikayla and then Mikayla came along and I went I honestly don’t have the time to do this. And the PUL that we’d bought to put in these nappies wasn’t PUL. I think I’ve still got that roll tucked away in the back of the cupboard at home. Here we are 14 years later. I know I’ve still got a box of swimmer elastic that I’ve bought.
Vicki: It will be pretty crap by now.
Vashti: Yeah, it will be really crap.
Andrew: We only in the middle of like, as the story goes on, Vicki was bringing in containers of fabric from overseas to make her nappies.
Vicki: We co-oped it, we actually co-oped it.
Vashti: I remember when I first bought my first nappies from Vicki when she was at the really old warehouse, it was this tiny little long thing, and I went to go and pick them up, and all I saw were just bolts of fabric, just piled high. All the way down one side.
Vicki: I only just recently got rid of the last of that to the bushfire, so they could make kangaroo pouches and stuff like that.
Andrew: That was like $20,000 worth of fabric still we had.
Vicki: Yeah, probably.
Andrew: Donated it all. What did they make out of that?
Vashti: Kangaroo pouches.
Vicki: Kangaroo pouches.
Vashti: There’s little pouches for the…
Vicki: And bat wraps and stuff like that.
Vashti: …carers to hold the animals in.
Andrew: That was brilliant.
Vicki: Yeah, but that was all, because we could not get the quality of the fabrics here, I was bringing in microfleece and minkies and all of that sort of stuff directly, having them custom made in China.
Vashti: We were having to buy at a farmers market.
Vicki: Yeah, you just couldn’t get the stuff.
Vashti: Somebody would come, we had our farmers market once a month and there was a fabric stall there, and we would just buy a couple of metres of this and a few metres of that, and stuff like that. And then all of us girls would get together and one of us would go I really like that print, can I have half a metre of that please? And we’d share fabric and stuff.
Vicki: Because even Spotlight just didn’t have the quality. That was back when they had really, really poor quality fabric.
Vashti: We were in central Victoria, we didn’t have a Spotlight within an hour and a half of us. So yeah. Did hear last night, Lincraft Australia is having trouble sourcing elastic.
Vicki: Oh, really?
Vashti: Because everyone is buying it up for masks. Everyone’s making masks at the moment.
Vicki: Interesting. See, there’s another little cottage industry that has popped up, essentially.
Vashti: It’s booming, absolutely booming. You cannot get the materials for it at the moment. I’ve got a friend that is making some masks for us, because I’m sure by the time this goes live, Queensland will be back in lockdown. But when you have a look at…
Andrew: No, we’ll be holidaying in New Zealand. The only place that’s allowed to travel overseas.
Vashti: But when you look at Victoria, we lived in Mitchell Shire when we lived in Victoria, when Braithe was a baby, and all of Melbourne and Mitchell Shire is mandatory masks at the moment, and that is…
Vicki: Isn’t it all of Victoria that’s mandatory? It’s just those areas?
Vashti: No, it’s Melbourne and Mitchell Shire. But Mitchell Shire is one of the largest councils in Victoria. It might even be one of the largest, it’s a huge council. Massive, massive council. But yeah, so that’s a massive area of Victoria is mandatory masks if you’re out in public, unless you have a medical exemption. So yeah, basically all of Victoria, or half of Victoria is masks. And it’s a massive, Lincraft is having problems sourcing elastic.
Andrew: We’ve got plenty of elastic. We actually bring elastic in from overseas for repairs don’t we, because we can’t get good elastic in Australia.
Vicki: No. Are you looking at the piece of elastic there that I’ve got, which would be barely five metres?
Andrew: Didn’t I…
Vashti: That elastic is probably not going to be great for masks either. It would work.
Vicki: No.
Andrew: Don’t we have any big, I thought we still had some big rolls of elastic.
Vicki: No, I used to get them in Brisbane. I used to get them directly from Sullivans.
Andrew: OK, maybe there’s actually some in the storage, from that.
Vicki: Maybe. It wouldn’t be any good.
Andrew: From the days when you used to make it.
Vicki: It wouldn’t be any good now. Elastic is the one thing that doesn’t store.
Vashti: No, it really is the Achilles heel of nappies as well. If something is going to go on your nappies, it will be the elastic.
Vicki: Which is a disadvantage of fitteds, but actually an advantage of fitteds, versus your all in ones or all in twos, which is actually back on topic, is if the elastic does go, because you’ve got a cover, you’ve still got protection. Whereas your elastic goes in your all in one or your all in twos, then you’ve got nothing.
Vashti: Pretty much.
Vicki: But gaps, lots of gaps.
Andrew: OK girls, I think we’ll finish there. Thank you, Vicki.
Vicki: Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew: Thank you, Vashti.
Vashti: Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew: Bye everybody.