If you sew, this seems like a really useful item to be able to make. In the old days, fabric pads were bulky rags you strapped on with a belt (hence the monikers some modern storebought pads have of variations of "stay-free", the strap system was the "stays" that refers to. Betcha' didn't know dat. It's also the origin of that nasty phrase "on the rag".).
When I got old enough, we had narrowly escaped the era of the readymades (those disasters of bulky horror that weren't really very absorptive) requiring that same belting system, and then Proctor& Gamble developed more refinements (which other brands were to follow and improve on) on the wearable absorbing garment (nappies, sanitary pads, eventually tampons -- but we'll ignore the Rely disaster and its associated TSS deaths, which is the real genesis of the labeling in those boxes about TSS; while TSS is very real, making a gel-filled tampon like modern diapers still have was a medical disaster of a large scale and many women died from it. P&G got smacked with a lot of lawsuits in the '70s as a result of this and had to be forced to take it off the market (I was around then, I remember it)).
Now if you choose to wear pads they're very slim, adhesive-backed, many with wings, and highly absorbent, as are tampons (Rely is why tampons don't have gel in them like diapers do). An alternative for a host of reasons is to make your own pads. Have fun with these. If you don't like what you make, you aren't going to wear it. Cloth sanitary pads have come a long way, baby. (Some of you will even remember where that meme comes from!)
