How To Make A Diaper Tricycle (Trike) – Easy Tutorial

I remember the first time I saw a diaper bike or diaper tricycle DIY tutorial on Pinterest, I thought the idea was so stinkin’ cute that I just had to make one for my nephew’s baby shower (at the time we didn’t know he was a he, so this is one I tried to make gender neutral)!  

I decided to make a diaper tricycle instead of a 2 wheel diaper bike, because it would be more stable.

I couldn’t easily find a diaper bike tutorial post with up close step-by-step pictures showing exactly how to make it and what products were used to add to it.  I just found pretty pictures of the end product and I wan’t real help making one.

So I decided to go ahead and do this myself – and give you the best step-by-step guide on how to bring this adorable baby shower gift to your next baby event!

Materials needed to make each diaper wheel:

• 2 bags of diapers – you need approximately 25 diapers per wheel
• large rubber bands – at least 6 of them
• 3 toilet paper rolls
• ribbon – I used an entire 9 ft. roll in the entire tricycle.
• A 9″ frying pan or a cake pan
• glue gun

Instructions on how to make your baby shower diaper tricycle:

1. The first step is that you need to start by making diaper wheels.  You will make three of them, hence why this is called a tricycle.  😉

2.  Grab a few diapers and line them up so that they are about an inch apart from each other.  See how I lined them up in the picture above with the arrows showing the distance between each diaper.

3.  Place them in a 9″ frying pan (or 9″ cake pan) and continue adding diapers in this fashion, one at a time.

4.  Your frying pan filled with diapers will get so full that you’ll think you can’t fit anymore.  But keep going!  You need to keep filling until you have about 25 diapers making a complete circle. 

Just keep tucking in the thin part of the diaper into the center.

5.  You will want your large rubber bands close by because these will keep your diapers in a circle.  Once your circle is complete, grab a large rubber band or 2, and wrap it around the center of the stacked diapers to hold “the wheel” together.

6.  Then you will want to find the very center of the diapers and stretch it a bit so you can fit a toilet paper roll in it.

This will make the wheel more stable and less likely to squish with the cardboard roll at the center.

7.  Now it’s time to cover up the rubber bands with some cute wide ribbon.

Wrap your wide ribbon all the way around the wheel and cut the length you need. Then grab your glue gun and add a bit to the end of one end and attach the other end to the hot glue. 

You could also a small dot around the ribbon in more places to keep it in place.  I chose not to though as I didn’t want to ruin any diapers with hot glue (I want the baby to actually be able to wear them!)

8.  That completes the first front wheel.  Now you need to go back and do these steps two more times to make the back wheels.

Now that you have all three wheels completed, it’s time to put the whole diaper tricycle together and add some accessories.

Many of the practical gifts I added to my diaper tricycle came from my list of Baby Products New Moms will Actually Use.

Here are the items I used for the rest of the making of my diaper tricycle:

• 2 receiving blankets or Swaddlers (I used Ziggy Baby Swaddle Blankets because my babies always liked those better than blankets alone.  This brand also had a wide selection of gender-neutral patterns which I was looking for.)
• 1 bib – I used a crumb catching bib from Chewbeads. This is for my future niece/nephew and my brother-in-law is a vegetarian.  🙂
• rubberbands
• 1 baby bottle (I like Dr. Browns) or sippy cups
• 1 pair of baby socks (I got mine at Walmart)

1. To keep the wheels together, you will use a rolled up blanket or rolled up swaddle blanket to secure it all together.

2.  Thread the rolled blanket into each of the toilet paper rolls and secure the end with a rubber band.  (Maybe one of these will turn into the baby’s first receiving blanket!)

3.  Tuck the rubber band back into the center of the toilet paper roll so it is hidden.  Now all three wheels are connected to each other.

4.  Now it’s time to construct the front of the bike and make some bike handles.  Again, you will need a second blanket, or in my case a ziggy baby swaddle blanket and roll it up.

5.  Thread the second blanket through the toilet paper roll of the front wheel.

6.  At this point, get a bib and attach that to the ribbons covering the back to wheels.

The bib forms the front panel of the bike.  My brother in law is a vegetarian, so I just love this Peace, Love & Veggies crumb catcher bib I found over on the Chewbeads website!  (They come in packs of three)

7.  Now grab a baby bottle and place that on top of the front wheel. You can also choose to use a sippy cup if you prefer.

8.  Use the second rolled blanket to hold the baby bottle or sippy cup in place.

 9.  Secure the blanket over the bottle with another rubber band.

10.  Use the rest of the wide ribbon you have from your 9ft. roll and make a cute bow to cover the rubber band.  You should cut the ends of the ribbon to make a “V” to help stop the ends from fraying.

11.  Now grab a pair of baby socks and place them over the ends of the blanket, making the tricycle handle bars. 

Isn’t it so cute the way it turned out??!!  There is no perfect way to decorate yours – especially if you know the gender, feel free to find practical gift accessories that are custom for that set of parents and baby.

12.  Lastly, this tricycle bike needs a rider and I added the stuffed animal as the final touch!  You can just have it sit on top of the bike and make it look like he’s holding tricycle handles the best you can. Then add any extra baby accessories you want to to make it complete.

As you can see, this stuffed rabbit also has more baby items attached it!  I added as many useful baby accessories as I could to the stuffed animal “riding” the bike.  Here’s what I used:

• I had a stuffed bunny, but I will recommend the Bed Buddy Warm Therapy Bear because you can warm this little guy up in the microwave for better snuggling!
• I then got a UV Skinz baby sun suit and dressed the bunny in that.
• I used a Dropper Stopper to attach a Gyro Bowl around the bunnies neck
• I topped it off with one Chewbeads necklace.
• I would have loved to also add some soft sole Robeez to the feet of this bunny!

I absolutely love the way that it turned out!  This is a great example of a perfect baby shower gift!  Everything here can totally be used for the baby (minus some rubber bands and ribbon.)  In fact, you could top this off by also giving a diaper bag or diaper backpack that will carry most of this baby gear and any extra diapers you have!  So if you purchase bags of diapers to make one of these, check out these reviews on the best backpack diaper bags.

I love getting baby gear – especially now that I no longer need it for myself but still love shopping for it!  I’m sure this will be the fun conversation piece at the baby shower and honestly can’t wait to both give it to my sister-in-law and and show it off.  😉

Another fun idea to do after the baby shower is to collect all of the cards and make a cute baby shower card collage out of them to hang in the babies room.  That way the cards won’t just get recycled after the thank-you notes are written and a cute wall hanging can be made out of them instead!

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Looking for another cute baby shower gift idea?  Check this out:

• Baby Shower Card Collage Keepsake