Colored cloth diapers don’t absorb better than undyed diapers. They don’t give your baby a better fit.

So, what is the point of colored diapers?

We make colored cloth diapers for 5 reasons.

5. Happy Baby

Once your babies are old enough to recognize and love colors, you will probably find that they have preferences. Cloth diapering becomes so much easier when your toddler looks forward to diaper changes with a favorite color.

4. Happy Parent

Colors are fun. When you see a color you like, you add a little joy to your task. You smile while your baby is watching you. Your baby smiles back. Diaper changing time becomes a time of happy smiles. If you consistently make a stinky face while you are changing diapers, your child won’t enjoy that time quite so much.

3. Happy Diaper Maker

Our work space is gorgeous! We have colors everywhere. In the same way color adds a little joy to a diaper change, it adds joy to diaper making time. Beautiful colors make for a pleasant work environment.

2. Low-impact Dye

Sustainability matters to us. We love the idea of using natural dyes, but we know you demand color-fast dyes. Without high-impact mordants, nasty chemicals that help the pigments attach to fibers, most natural dyes won’t give you bright, lasting colors. Fiber-reactive dyes create a permanent bond with the fibers, and the dyes are fixed on cotton with simple soda ash.

It also takes less energy to use fiber-reactive dyes, since room temperature to body temperature water does the job. We chose to balance color and impact with fiber-reactive dyes.

1. Our Customer Asked for Them

We thought Firefly Diapers would be all about the plain, undyed diaper. Our sister company, Fuzbaby, is all about color. We loved Firefly Diapers for their excellent functionality. Well, it turns out that not everyone wants just function. You want beautiful diapers! Our customers asked, nudged, requested, and demanded Firefly Quick Dry Diapers in colors, so we made them. Then, our customers collected colored diapers.

Usually, Quick Dry Color Diapers are undyed on the inside, but we sometimes use up small pieces of fabric and lulls in production to create Firefly Quick Dry Color Clown diapers, with colors in every one of the six pieces and trimmed with organic cotton thread. These popular, colored diapers are in stock now.

We’ve been selling a lot of flat diapers lately. When I take phone orders, I usually ask the customer about the choices they are making. One customer ordered a few diapers a couple of months ago and liked them so much she called back to order three dozen more.

• “Are you using pins or Snappi or anything else to secure the diapers?” I asked.
• No, she just uses a snug cover.
• “What do you like best about them?”
• Absorbency. She folds them in four (first the long way, then across) and tucks the rectangle into a cover.

This is so different from the way I used flat diapers with my children, shaping them in an hourglass and adding another layer down the center. It’s just a plain rectangle. You can fold and bunch it any way that works for your child. And, size is less an issue than with fitted diapers.

The great thing about flat diapers, the biggest selling point in my opinion, is the use of only 100% organic cotton for every part of the diaper, including the thread. No elastic or plastic snaps.

If you are looking for a 100% organic cotton cloth diaper and you want more flexibility than you can get with fitted diapers, try Firefly Flat Diapers. Buy 3+ to save.

The Sundance Channel’s new environmental program, The Green, has several very interesting episodes available for view online. Look at this list and see if you see what I do:

• Crapshoot: The Gamble with Our Wastes – dangerous sewer toxicity
• Waste = Food – planning true recycling of waste from the moment of manufacture
• A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash – when oil fields go dry

I see diapers.

Sewer Waste? I have seen lately how many people are flushing petro-chemical wastes down the toilet in the name of eco-diapers. What does this add to the toxic load of our wastewater treatment systems?

Waste = Food. To make diapers truly sustainable, everything left after the working life of a diaper needs to become food for another process.

Crude. I continually wonder why people are willing to use plastic, a product that originates as crude oil, to do a job that renewable resources do perfectly well.

Apparently, Green is the new Black, or so this week of Green events at the London College of Fashion would lead us to believe.

The more fashion and mass apparel industries talk about sustainability in clothing, the closer we come to that tipping point when the mainstream public is aware of the importance of sustainable fibers and low-impact clothing. And, you and I know that a focus on sustainable and renewable fibers leads to cloth diapers.

I find it interesting that green fashion is debated at the same time that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is figuring out, OK, so what do we DO about it. There is style and substance all tied up in one tidy week.