Fabric Wipes Baby Toy Tutorial!

Is it a universal thing that babies and toddlers love to pull wipes out of their containers, or is that just my son?  🙂  You better darn well be fast at picking up the wipes box and putting it away after changing his diaper, or else he’ll have a huge handful of wipes out of it in no time flat.  I once left ours out while I took a shower.  I came downstairs to a huge pile of wipes in the middle of my floor.  You live and you learn though, right?

This is such a fun, simple toy that you can make for your babies/toddlers – and you most likely have everything you need to make it right in your house!  It may not stop them from taking out actual wipes when they have a chance, but it’s definitely something to keep them entertained!

1 – First, you need a reusable plastic wipes container.  You’ve got one, right?  It’s easiest to use one that has the flexible rubber insert where the wipes are pulled out.

2 – Then you need a bunch of fabric – this is a perfect time to use all those leftover scraps you’ve got lying around.  For my project, I used fat quarters – which made 2 of the fabric “wipes” out of each.  Measure them to the size you want (I used a book I had on hand to make them all uniform – they’re a little larger than a DVD case) and cut them out.  Then you can either leave the edges raw, hem them, or as in my case, serge the edges.

3 – If you’re interested in putting numbers and letters on them, like I did, you can either do appliques (Warning: I tried this first and it did not work for me, they came off after folding the scraps), or use a bleach pen, like I did.  You draw on the letters & numbers with a pencil first (or just free hand it) and trace it with the bleach pen (make sure you have something underneath the fabric scraps – like a piece of cardboard – so that it doesn’t ruin any of your surfaces).  Let it sit for about 10 minutes (or until it looks done and you can tell it’s been bleached) and then carefully rinse off the excess.

4 – Fold them like wipes.  Easy to do!  Place Wipe #1 on the floor.  Overlap Wipe #2 over Wipe #1, covering about half of Wipe #1.  Fold the uncovered portion of Wipe #1 over the overlapped portion of Wipe #2.  Then place Wipe #3 over that – and repeat (I included step-by-step pictures of this, as it makes much more sense visually than it does in words).

5 – Place them in the wipes container and thread the top one through the opening.  They should pull out like traditional wipes.

6 – Let your little ones enjoy wreaking havoc on these instead of your wipes!