A Little Spacey

When a friend and neighbor showed me some of the blankets and nursery accents she was working on for her newest baby on the way, the wheels started turning. Of course, I had to make a diaper cake for her and being sneaky like I am, I made a point to take note of the theme she was going with - outer space.

I daresay, I thought the project to create an outer space diaper cake was going to be much simpler, or perhaps, it's just the way I work, but the whole project took much more time than I anticipated and sadly, it was delivered after the baby was born. At least it wasn't so late that she couldn't use the diapers.

To coordinate the theme, I decided to make a baby quilt with space printed fabric. I'm still new to quilting, but I wanted to do this right, so I planned it all ahead and went to work. No complicated shapes, just squares and strips, and I think for my second true quilt (not counting the rag quilts I'd made for previous gifts) this one came out great, especially since it was my first time designing one and not following anyone else's instructions! I even managed to have the finished project the size I was going for (40"x40"). In the end it was an adorable quilt made of cotton print with super low loft poly/cotton batting, making it a nice light quilt for a summer baby.

Of course, for a whole diaper cake, I needed a few more items to go around the tiers, so I created some coordinating burp cloths. Two were solid colored in a turquoise flannel that matched the quilt. I then made a third burp cloth with bright orange flannel that coordinated with the quilt and accented it on one end with the cotton space print material used in the quilt. The burp cloths were great, but unfortunately they weren't enough on their own and I needed one more item for the cake.

I decided to try a brand new project and make a pair of cotton pants with some of the matching cotton material. I found a pattern for newborn pants and got to work. The main part of the pants were made with the space print cotton fabric. I added extra thick cuffs at the bottom of the pants using the turquoise material from the quilt so that the ends could be rolled to adjust for length. I love how they turned out. It's hard to imagine a baby that small, but they fit the new baby great.

With all of these items together, it created my third "Nursery Set." Nursery Sets are basically a collection of coordinated baby items that can be created and then either gifted as the set itself or they can be incorporated into a cake to make a themed diaper cake. Previous nursery sets can be seen here where I created two rag quilt nursery sets for cloth diapering mamas. This complete set included one quilt, three burp cloths and a pair of newborn pants.

With all the items completed, I was able to begin work on the cake. the quilt became the decoration for the bottom tier. The middle tier held the two turquoise burp cloths and the pants and third embellished burp cloth adorned the top tier. Additional goodies were added to the cake including a pair of socks, teethers, and washcloths. As a final touch, I placed a rattle on the top of the cake and I love how it looks "spacey" and the colors match wonderfully. I don't think I could have picked a better cake topper. Of course, the best part of the whole thing was that the mom liked the diaper cake and was especially excited that it was spaced themed, just as she selected for the nursery.

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