Recovering a Change Pad - A Tutorial

I seem to have an abundance of formula brand changing pads that I got for free and I've never been a big fan of how they look. I also have been wanting to make a change pad to go with my sisters diaper bag so I thought I'd just recover one of the formula brand pads! It worked out great and was really quite easy, but in just case you were interested, here's a tutorial on making one yourself!

Start with a change pad that has fabric on one side and some kind of vinyl or plastic covering on the other side like this one:

Then grab your seam ripper! (and be glad you're getting it to re-make something, not because you made another mistake!)

Find the starting point on the bias tape of the pad.

and start ripping that bias tape off! If you want to reuse the tape, do this very carefully, I didn't want to so I was pretty rough and it definitely wasn't reusable once I was through with it.

Once the bias tape is all off, it should look like this. I decided to leave the fabric cover on because it wasn't doing any harm and actually would make the whole pad stronger.

Lay your pad on top of your choice fabric and cut it out to the same size as the actual pad is.

Pin the new piece of fabric on top of the fabric side of the change pad.

Then take a short break to take photos of your kids plastic animals... only because they think that's really cool.

Sew the new fabric onto the old pad with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Be careful not to go over that allowance or it will show once you put the new bias tape on.

Then grab some bias tape and matching thread...

and pin that bias tape on, all the way around. This was actually my very first time using bias tape so forgive me if it's not perfect or my method wasn't great. (Amy Karol actually has a great video tutorial on this, you can see it here)

Now sew that bias tape on! This I found to be pretty finicky and next time I would probably put in a lot more pins, just to make sure it stayed in place as I stitched.

And there you go! You have a beautiful new change pad! Of course once I had it all finished I thought how cute it would have looked with some applique or something on it so if you want to do something like that just make sure you do it before you sew the new fabric and bias tape on!