DIY Car Seat Cover

When I had my daughter, 3 years ago, and wanted to cover her car seat so she could sleep or so that no one would disturb her, I would throw a blanket over the handle bars and call it done. She was covered so it worked but you still had to put your arm underneath the blanket if you wanted to carry the car seat which was a bit inconvenient and still let light in. And heaven forbid a strong wind come along and that blanket was half way down the street before you knew it!

Apparently, in the last 3 years, some wonderful person came up with an idea to remedy this!

I started noticing a few of them around town and just thought they were the greatest thing ever! And with number 2 on the way, I decided I pretty much needed to have one.  I assumed that I could find and buy one off of an Etsy shop somewhere if I wanted to, but it looked so easy to make I thought that surely I could find a way to make this myself!

(Enter my husband’s raised eyebrows here.) Ok, so I can do floral design, interior design, even manage some crafts, but sewing is not my forte. Let’s just say I have had a few mishaps with sewing during our marriage. Ha ha ha! However, I am proud to say I can sew a straight line so I figured I could do this project on my own for sure…if only I could find instructions somewhere…

I found a great tutorial here and, also, fell in love with the fabric that she had done it in! My instructions below are an adaptation of the tutorial I found. For more information or to see all her detailed photos, go here.

Unfortunately, where I live there are very few fabric stores and needless to say, most of the fabrics are uninspiring. However, my mom lives close to lots of great fabric stores….so she was able to find the exact fabric for me that the tutorial had used! I was so excited!

I still had great plans to make this. My mom was coming out to visit for Christmas and was going to bring the fabric for me so I could do the project. And as it turns out, I ended up in the hospital for several days and then was put on strict bed rest starting a week and a half before they came out. Just my luck.

So this project ended up being a joint me/mom project...with me mostly being a supportive peanut gallery and  with my mom doing most of the work. Thanks mom!

But I am just SURE I could have done it on my own if circumstances were different! It really is THAT easy!

So here we go! How to make a fabulous car seat cover!

You will need:

• 1 yard each of two coordinating or same fabrics (this is for the main part of the cover and the underneath side of it). HOWEVER, if you choose a directional print like I did, you will need more fabric so that the “animals” in my case, are facing the right way and not to the side. I used the animal print for the front and a brown with turquoise dot print for the underneath side.
• 6” width of another coordinating fabric that will end up being the turquoise with brown dot fabric on the handles/straps that you see in my photos.
• 2.5” width of another fabric (this is the brown with turquoise dot fabric you see on the handles)
• Sewing machine
• Thread
• Fabric scissors
• Iron

The How To:

1. Cut the main fabrics to approximately 37”w x 45”l (this allows for ½” seam) where “l” is your total length from front to back and “w” is your total width from left to right across the carrier. However, I suggest measuring your car seat carrier. If I had followed the original directions to the letter, my cover would have been a bit short for my carrier. So use your carrier as a guide.

2. Round the corners.

3. Place the two fabrics, right sides together and sew them with about a ½” seam, leaving a little space for turning.

4. Notch the corners, iron the seams open and turn so right sides are out.

5. Iron the whole thing.

6. Edge stitch around the entire blanket.

7. Cut each of the remaining fabrics for the handles in half so you have two 6” x 22” pieces and two 2.5” x 44” pieces.

8. Using the 6” wide pieces, with right sides out, fold both edges in to meet the middle. Iron.

9. Do the same with the 2.5” wide pieces.

10. Lay the narrow strip on to the wider strap so all unfinished edges are facing each other. Do for both straps.

11. Sew both the narrow and the wide strips together.

12. Tuck the ends in and edge stitch both ends of each strap together.

13. Sew the straps on the blanket.

• Again, measure your particular carrier, but on mine, we sewed the straps 19” down from the back side edge of the blanket. And used 5” clear spacing between the two straps. 
• Each strap was sewn in a square shape onto the blanket that was about equal to the width of the narrow strip.

Tie those handles/straps on to your car seat carrier and voila! Wonderful, miraculous car seat cover that won’t blow away in the wind and will allows you to keep baby covered even while carrying it!

I just can’t wait to use this!

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