Plain Diaper Cakes are for Sissies

My good friend, Mrs. B, is having her first baby in March and Mr. B and I decided to throw her a surprise baby shower last weekend.  As soon as she told me she was pregnant I started looking for fun baby craft projects and stumbled on this little gem.  

I was just kidding about that plain diaper cakes are for sissies thing.  Seriously though, anyone can give a diaper cake.  But a diaper tricycle?!  Yes, please!  By the way, people are selling these for a small fortune on Etsy if you're not feeling crafty.  I might need to get in on that, as a matter of fact.

Mrs. B is actually going to use cloth diapers, but I knew there was simply no way I was going to get that many cloth diapers made in time.  When we were painting her nursery a few weeks ago, I casually asked her if she would like to have a stash of disposables for emergencies and to keep in the car, etc.  

Heh, heh.  I'm so sneaky.

(Please excuse the weird focus on the pictures.  MacGyver is a much better photographer than I am.)  You'll need about 55-60 diapers, two bibs, two receiving blankets, a pair of socks, an angel food cake pan, rubber bands, ribbon, some safety pins, and a bottle that for our purposes you're going to pretend is also in the picture.  

Eh hem.  

You're going to make one large wheel and two smaller wheels.  For the larger wheel I used about 30 diapers.  You can adjust it to your liking.  You'll want enough to make it nice and sturdy.  Start by staggering the diapers about 3/4" apart and wrapping them around the center of your poor battered angel food cake pan that your mom gave you when you got your first place in college.  Keep adding diapers in the same direction until they start meeting the first diaper.  Then start pinching the diapers toward the middle and twisting as you add more.  When you've added all the diapers you'll have a nice pinwheel in the pan and you can adjust them until they are evenly spaced and looking pretty.

Gently press the bottom of the pan up from the bottom to expose the outside of your wheel.  This takes a little dexterity, but while you have the wheel lifted up, wrap a rubber band around the outside to hold it all together.

Then pop that bad boy out of the pan!  You'll probably want to adjust the diapers again after this as they can shift a little when you're putting on the rubber band.  Rinse and repeat two more times for the smaller wheels.  I used about 20 diapers per small wheel, but you can make them however you like.

When you've got all three wheels ready (how cute are these?!), carefully widen the centers of the wheels so there are holes an inch or so in diameter.

Wrap the ribbon around the rubber bands to cover them up and secure with a safety pin.  I picked diaper pins since I new Mrs. B will be doing the cloth diaper thing most of the time.

Take one of the receiving blankets that you had to go back to the store and buy after you accidentally cut right through the middle of the ones you were making for Baby B and threw a fish flopping fit involving naughty words that are not suitable for baby ears.

Eh hem.  Don't be like me.

Roll up the blanket into a tight roll.  I didn't take a picture of this (I was still mad about the first blankets I ruined), but if you fold the blanket in half and then roll it up, it's a lot easier and stays rolled tighter.  Either way, you want a long, rolled blanket.

Rinse and repeat with the second blanket.  

Thread one blanket through the center of the larger wheel...

...and pull the ends around and snake them through each of the back wheels to join in the middle.

Secure it with a safety pin.  Don't worry about making this part pretty - just slide it inside one wheel and you'll never see it.

Make sure the treads are facing the same direction on the back wheels or it will look weird.  You don't want weird looking tires, now do you?  I didn't think so.

Take the other blanket and feed it through the center of front wheel until the ends are even.

Lay one of the bibs across the front wheel and secure it under the ribbon you used to cover the rubber band.

I saw this bib on etsy and didn't have time to order one.  I used t-shirt transfer paper that you print on and iron onto fabric.  I have no idea how well this will work as a bib, but it's cute.

Do the same thing with the other bib across the back tires, and secure the ends inside the front wheel center.  This will become the seat.

For the visual learners...

Remember that baby bottle we were pretending was in the first photo?  Lay it on top of the front wheel with the bottom facing the front of the tricycle.  Pull the ends of the second blanket up like bunny ears around the bottle and secure tightly with a rubber band.

Wrap ribbon around the rubber band to cover it up, and put the socks on over the ends of the blanket for handle bars.  This tricycle is for a boy, but pink tassels would be fun on a girl tricycle!  Not that there is anything wrong with boys liking pink, I just haven't had a chance to ask Baby B if he likes pink and I don't like to assume.

Though as an aside, I picked green and yellow for the colors because I like them, and blue seemed a little cliche.  Halfway through making this I realized Mr. B went to OSU - long time rival to my alma mater, U of O - whose colors are green and yellow.  This made me chuckle.

(Read the subliminal messages, Baby B!  Come to the dark side!  We have candy!)

And you're done!

This took about 2 hours to put together start to finish, but I imagine it could be done in less.  It was a big hit at the shower!

Happy crafting!