Washable and Reusable Swiffer Pads

I originally posted this on my old blog, but eventually determined I didn't like the format for posting. 

I aspire to be a decent quilter. Admittedly, being a stay at home mom to two pre-teens doesn’t exactly leave me room to sew. I try to get some in once and awhile, but I haven’t really honed my skills. With that in mind, I am also a fan of saving as much money as I can. Every little bit helps. I found tutorials for making your own Swiffer sweeper pads. How cool is that?! Then, the down side. The ones I found were fairly vague. I, being a creature of order and conciseness, did not find this acceptable. So, with no further ado, here is my own structured tutorial. 

I started with ¼ yard of No-Pill fleece from Wal-Mart. I am sure you can get it anywhere, but again, I am cheap. According to my handy-dandy Quilter app on my phone (finally, a reason to use it!), I am seeing that, depending on how I cut it, I can get 8 or 9 pads.

Cut your fleece at 7 inches by 18 inches.

Fold both ends onto itself at 3 ½ inches.

(Now this is where I had a bit of trouble figuring out what I was doing. Originally, I sewed at ¼ seam allowance and determined that it left too much slack in the pad, at least in my opinion.)

Sew at ¾ inch seam allowance.

On my machine, when the needle is sewing dead center, this seam allowance lines up with my 1 inch mark. (The foot on my machine is a 1/4 presser foot. I use this foot for quilting and for the most part never take it off my machine unless required.)

Trim to ¼ inch seam allowance. (This step is not required, but I don't like the extra bit, so it is really your preference.)

And you are done! The finished product will be snug to get onto your Swiffer, but will work. In fact, you can tuck your new Swiffer in to the holding clips and it will pull the sides of the pad up slightly to cover the exposed edges. (If you couldn't tell, I really like pink....)

I assume this method will work for making Swiffer wet jet pads, but don’t quote me on that. I will be attempting to make some here shortly.

Happy sewing, cleaning, and saving!

About Me

I guess I should probably start with a little about myself.

I am a (almost) 30 year old mom of two. One boy, age 14, and one girl, age 12. I guess they are technically my step children, but we have come to an agreement that "step" is not in our vocabulary. I call them mine, and they call me theirs. It is a beautiful arrangement as far as I am concerned.

I have always been craft oriented. My grandmother may have tried to teach me how to crochet when I was (maybe) 8 or so, but it didn't really stick. Well, how to do it did, but the desire to do it didn't. I was a kid, can you blame me?

I did love working with beads though. Do you remember those beaded geckos? If not, here, let me refresh your memory...

(photo not mine, and links back to owners tutorial; because you know you wanna make one again)

I made a billion of these...and once those got boring I started making other shapes. And I would proudly shove them in the face of everyone I could. "Look what I made!" My mother still has a Seahawks gecko I made my father somewhere in the garage, it makes an appearance every year  for the annual "mom hates to warm up her car in the winter" clean-up.

As I got older, school became the focus and I ran out of time and energy to make things. Then in my early 20's I injured my shoulder pretty bad. I was in a sling for months, and it drove me absolutely bonkers! Somehow I decided to pick up cross-stitch, yet another art my grandmother had taught me but I had never had the time for.

I went from buying kits, to buying just patterns (by this I mean that I would buy bulk lots on ebay of hundreds of books. I am now the proud owner of far more cross-stitch patterns than I will ever be able to complete, but I can't bring myself to get rid of them), to finding patterns for free online, and then eventually to making my own patterns. I will be sharing a bunch of them as time passes.

At some point I started going to a quilt group with my grandmother. She needed a taxi and I had nothing better to do, so why not? And then it was fun. Then, a miracle happened....I stumbled on Fandom in Stitches. Oh my God, someone had taken all geeky things I loved and made them crafty. I was in heaven. (I have been hand embroidering a Dr. Who quilt from this site for the last 3 years....it just keeps getting bigger. I will share it with you, I promise.)

This blog is to share what I have made, what I have learned, and will hopefully give others ideas. Besides my family, my other focus is saving money. Lets face it, life (in general) with children can get pretty expensive. Hopefully you will be able to take some of my tips and tricks and save your sanity, if not a few bucks.

Until next time!
-Cali