How to Upcycle Nappy Bin Refill Cassettes

3 Materials
$5
30 Minutes
Easy

We use a nappy bin with angel care refill cassettes to dispose of our nappies (diapers) in the house before they go to the outside bin. If you are not familiar with this basically you push the nappy/diaper through the slot in the bin and it is gobbled up by an ever expanding thin plastic bag to keep the stink out and so you end up throwing out a big long sausage of nappies! Anyway when each cassette runs out you are left with the plastic ring that holds that large plastic bag. I have two boys in nappies at the moment so I end up with a lot of them.

I decided I needed to find a way to upcycle them. I actually have a number of ideas I’m working on, this is the first and probably the simplest. It involves using the empty cassette rings, some scrap fabric and some twine to create a hanging soft toy tidy/display unit.

The first step is to cut your fabric. Anyway, I made one cut about 4cm across and tore my fabric vertically in one long strip per refill cassette. I didn’t measure it because my leftover fabric was quite long – approximately a metre long. It ended up being too long so I cut it off again at the end. If you don’t have enough in one fabric or one strip you could always sew strips together to continue so don’t worry about the length too much at this point.

I tied the strip of fabric to the cassette with the knot to the back and the patterned side of the fabric facing out. Then you just wrap your fabric around the cassette overlapping the previous loop of fabric each time.


The overlapping is just to make sure you don’t get any of the blue plastic peeking out.


If you need more process photos of this or any of the other steps you can find them at: https://upcyclemystuff.com/2019/08/05/how-to-upcycle-nappy-bin-refill-cassettes-soft-toy-tidy/

When I had all of my nappy cassette covered in fabric I cut off the end of my strip of fabric, folded it under and sewed it to the inside of the cassette where the stitches wouldn’t be visible. I used a basic running stitch and I wasn’t too precious about it either as it was on the part of the casette where you won’t see it.

Repeat the steps above for however many nappy bin refill cassettes you want to upcycle. I choose three, but you could easily use more for this project. The empty cassettes are very light so this wouldn’t be heavy to hang on the wall even with 5 or 6 of them.

To attach my fabric covered nappy bin cassettes together I used twine. I started by folding a long piece of twine in half so I had a loop.


I threaded the twine around the fabric ring, through the loop and pulled tight. I then wrapped the twine around the second fabric wring and threaded the ends of the twine back through themselves (see the photo above).


I wrapped the twine around both rings at once several times until it both felt secure and looked thick enough.


Lastly I decided which side would be the back of my tidy and looped the twine under itself on that side to tie it secure with a knot. Then I cut off the loose ends and tucked them in.

Creating the hanging loop was just a case of taking two lengths of twine, folding them and looping them around the top of the tidy. I tied a knot at the top and trimmed the ends.


If you don’t like the twine look you could do this step and the step above with more scrap fabric and you could attach it by sewing on the back rather than looping and knotting.

I decided to make this a soft toy hanging tidy/display unit for my son's smaller teddyies, but it could also be used to hang scarves or even jewellery or to pin up photos, momentos or other items. 

Resources for this project:
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Kristen Hubert
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2 of 16 comments
  • Charlene Morgan Charlene Morgan on Sep 19, 2019

    I'm thinking that 3 or 4 in a stack could be wrapped with orange fabric to make a pumpkin...

  • Laurarene04 Laurarene04 on Sep 16, 2020

    Spray paint. And flowers for candle ring or wall wreaths. Decorate as faces add hats and scarfs for deer, elves, Santa etc. For wall decor or even round bulb ornament look for wall decor

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