Going Green

Quite some time ago (last June, I think) I was asked if it was possible to make a diaper cake with cloth diapers. I happen to be in a mom group where a number of the moms cloth diaper (including myself). As environmentally conscious moms, they were curious if the craft could be applied in a manner using cloth diapers for other mamas that planned to "go green." Without thinking about it much, I figured it shouldn't be much of a challenge and proceeded to go home and experiment.

I don't use prefold diapers - but I had several that I use for burp cloths - and I figured these would work best for making a cake. I folded and rolled the prefold diapers as I did the disposables and built them into a cake. A burp cloth  was then used to wrap around the cake. I tied it with a decorative bow and added teethers and a squeaky duck as accents. Since I had a limited number of diapers, the cake was only a 1-tier cake, but it gives an idea of what a cloth diaper diaper cake would look like. A larger multi-tier cake can certainly be made. Likely in that case, I'd use different sizes for each tier and possibly place something in the center of the larger tiers if the diapers weren't bulky enough since the number of diapers in a cloth diaper diaper cake doesn't need to be as extensive as you'd need with disposable. This cake was just a display/test cake. I wanted to make sure that my initial thought that it was possible was correct. The cake came out really cute. Although, despite the fact that I had people asking about it, I still have yet to have someone order one. Like I mentioned, that was last June (and I can't believe I hadn't blogged about it yet...).

More recently on the diaper cake forum I joined, the discussion again presented itself. Are cloth diaper diaper cakes possible? Had anyone made them? So, of course, I responded with info about mine and suggestions like making sure to use the right kind of prefolds (assuming the new mom wanted to use prefolds) and recommending using different sizes. One of the people asked about making the cloth diaper diaper cake in a spiral style and questioning the stability of such a cake and if such a thing was possible. Me and my big mouth replied that of course it was possible. I couldn't see why it wouldn't be feasible. This, of course, gave me another project. I should put my money where my mouth is and actually make one before I start telling everyone it can be done. So, again, I gather my prefold diapers and fold them up and wrap them in a spiral configuration. I was right, it was possible. For this cake, I went completely simple. I spiraled the single tier cake and decorated it with ribbon and crinkle paper. I had to make sure that the diapers were visible in the spiral form so the forum members could see it put together. In practice, I might use more baby items to finish off the cake, but for demonstration purposes, this was enough.

I'm definitely happy to have these under my belt in the off chance that someone wants to order one. The down-side to such a project is a significant cost increase for such a cake because of the cost of diapers. I'm also not sure how many diapers would be needed in a cake like this if it was multiple tiers. These small cakes had 7 and 8 diapers respectively and were made with newborn diapers. It'd be an adventure to make one, and I'd be excited for the project. I probably will experiment with my other diapers at some point since I have more of them to see how that would work. I'm excited about the possibilities with these cakes especially considering it's a very specific market that I can be a part of.