Wool
Wool for Children
Wool Cloth Diaper Covers
Fuzbaby Wool Diaper Covers
Wool is a protein, a sheep's hair. It looks very much like your hair, with overlapping cuticles that hold on to one another when it is fulled or felted. The huge variety of wool resources tends to focus on agriculture and industry. The wool industry offers a slick packing of wool information. The American Wool Council has several pdf documents with basic wool info. Or, you may want to pick through assorted links of various aspects of wool. If you have a shelf full of old National Geographic magazines, look for the 1988 history of wool.
[SEM image of 100% at 25x and 250x magnification copyright 2000 Marc Pehkonen.]
Wool for Children
Carding, spinning, weaving or felting and fulling are great ways to help kids understand properties of wool. American Sheep Industry Association has a “For Kids” section with basic information and activities. There are quite a few good sources of wool information and curriculum for children, from agriculture to fiber to dye to fabric. In-Touch Science is a program sponsored by Cornell University and the National Science Foundation. One of their publications, ITS: Fibers and Animals, has ten activities for grades 3-5 to show how science concepts relate to fibers used for textiles and animals. Addresses microstructures and includes wool felting activity. National Gardening Association Kid’s Gardening includes classroom activities for plant dying that can be used with wool. Includes a good list of cross-curriculum dye-related activities.
Melanie Falick’s Kids Knitting is a useful favorite for helping children learn to knit with projects they can use.
If you want to help children back up and see sheep and wool in context, a 17-minute video history of wool is available from Utah Agriculture in the Classroom, “Fiber to Fabric,” for grades 3-11.
Why Choose Wool for Diaper Covers?
Wool keeps sheep dry. Why? Wool's structure produces an elegant combination of water repellence, breathability and moisture absorbency.
At a microscopic level wool consists of a series of overlapping scales (called cuticles) which have a tendency to repel water droplets. This structure, in combination with a thin coating of lanolin (an oil secreted from the sheep's skin) causes water to run off the fibers. (The duck's back effect is also a sheep's back effect.) Natural water repulsion makes wool a good candidate for a diaper cover.
Why is wool a sustainable choice? The sheep keep growing the wool. Wool can be grown and processed organically. That is not to say that all sheep are grown sustainably or that all wool is processed sustainably. On the contrary, it is difficult to find wool that is BOTH grown and processed organically. Notice when you buy organic wool, if the label is very specific: "Organically grown," this may mean the wool is not organically processed. Despite all good intentions, sheep in certain areas would die without certain treatments for parasites (in some places the parasites are inside, in some places they are outside). Such treatment disqualifies wool from most organic certification. Despite the difficulty in finding well-treated wool, wool remains the best choice for diaper covers because of its performance.'
For more wool science for diapering parents, see our article, “Why Use Wool for Diaper Covers?”
Fuzbaby Wool Diaper Covers
Wool is the FUZ in FUZBABY, baby! Fuzbaby was started with a wool diaper cover, the Fuzbomb, still available today. The Fuzbomb is a tailored cover with leg gussets and a back gusset that makes it a great shape to hug baby tight around a big cloth diaper. The Fuzbomb’s contour diaper cousin the Almost-in-One diaper cover, has leg gussets also with a self gusset in back and less gathering, since it is designed for a trimmer diaper. Diapers used with these covers don't need snaps or pins.
Fuzbomb wool covers are soft and breathable. They soak up wetness without feeling more than damp. We have wool diaper covers in bright colors of fulled new wool, with deep leg gussets to hug baby softly, and hook & loop closure or snaps at front.
