“The Wilmarth School” was built in the 1880s and was used as a school building for exactly 100 years, before becoming home to Party In My Pants! Photo credit Aria Durward.
On any given day, the clicks and clanks of our sewing machines echo through the halls of our studio- a brownstone school building originally built in the 1880s. Our production team is hard at work creating our beautiful cloth pads from scratch- every step happens here! They spend hours cutting, sewing, snipping threads, and snapping pads nearly every day of the week to keep up with the constant stream of orders. There’s quite a few steps in making our washable cloth pads, and every one is important for a lush and beautiful finished product that will last over 5 years!
The production room at the Wilmarth School building, the home of Party In My Pants!
Photo credit: Brandi Shapland
Throughout the month, we receive deliveries of gorgeously patterned flannel and cotton fabrics, enormous rolls of our birds-eye cloth, and the nylon leakproof material that is used as the bottom layer for our cloth pads and cloth panty liners. Our full-time fabric cutter lays out the fabric on one of our huge cutting tables, and spends hours transforming it into the ingredients needed for sewing our pads.
Once the pieces are the correct size, our production team begins to sew them together. All of our cotton reusable pads and liners have at least one layer of super absorbent cotton in middle, in a special fabric weave called “birds-eye”. Our Super, Super Overnight, and Queen pads also contain a strip of hemp/cotton fleece, making them our most absorbent sizes!
We call this step quilting: it combines the inner cotton fabric with the patterned fabric on top.
Video credit Brandi Shapland.
The pads-to-be are sewn inside out and then flipped so the pattern can be seen. After they are flipped, we sew around the outer edges of the pad. This sewing step is called “top-stitching”. This helps the pads lie flat, and makes them stronger and more durable, so they last many years!
On the left: Stacks of half finished pads- only a few steps left!
On the right: These pads are waiting to be flipped inside-out and sewn again.
Photo credit Aria Durward.
The final steps happen in our shipping room, where chill music and the constant chirping of our shipping label makers will fill your ears. When pads arrive in this room, we begin by freeing them of any long threads in our cozy thread-snipping corner. Then they make their way to our snapping station- the final step!
The shipping room is home to our finished pads and accessories, for our retail website and wholesale locations.
Liz uses the snapping machine to add snaps to a pile of Medium Pads. Photo credit Aria Durward.
Our snapping machine is bright blue and emits a healthy CLUNK! with every snap placement (it’s also a good leg workout!). The finished pads are then counted and placed in their spot on our inventory shelves.
A well stocked shelf! Photo credit Aria Durward.
Our cotton menstrual pads would not be complete without a loving place to call home! We can ship anywhere in the world, and we have happy customers across the U.S. and in many international locations too! It makes our hearts glad to create products that brighten peoples’ days and make their periods a little easier.
Packaging up an adorable customer order. Photo credit Aria Durward.