Car Seat Cover

 I really love yellow -- as a "blonde", I don't look good in yellow, but love that spring comes in with yellow and summer exits that way, too.

My sweet friend Lauren chose yellow and grey for her new baby's room, so I decided to follow her lead and make a yellow and grey quilt.  I started collecting fabrics months ago, but at a baby shower we held for her, someone else gave her a beautiful handmade baby quilt, so I shifted gears a bit.  And went to pinterest.

I had been seeing a lot of car seat covers pinned, and thought that might be a perfect gift. After reading several different blog posts on the covers (here, here and here), I combined a few ideas into my own, and came up with this:

It's not really a quilt:  there are only 2 layers, and no machine or hand quilting to hold them together.  But I love to piece, and had so many cool fabrics that I decided to make it look like a quilt, anyway.

As you know, I am a huge fan of Crimson Tate, the grooviest little quilt shop ever.  There, I found this cute Heather Ross fabric - Snow White and the 7 dwarfs, in yellow and gray.  Perfect.  (And who could resist all those little longjohns hanging on the line?)

Following the other blogger's leads, I used a yard of the backing fabric (which I failed to take a picture of -- it is lovely soft Minkey fabric, in yellow - this is what it looks like) and then pieced the top to match that size.  I rounded off the corners for easier sewing, then pinned the edging around.  (I had hoped to find some jumbo rickrack in yellow or grey, as in the example, but no luck.  I did find some white ruffled edging at Hobby Lobby, so I dyed it a soft grey -- I think it worked just fine.)  Then, I simply sewed front and back, right sides together, leaving an opening for turning, then turned inside out and sewed up the opening.

The whole idea of these car seat covers is that they are attached to the handle of the seat and keep the wind and cold off of the baby.  I saw many ways to do this, but like the little bows and velcro straps the best.  I set these in 11" from the sides and 20" from one edge.

Since I don't have a little car seat around any more (!), I tried to use my bike to illustrate how this is supposed to work:

 
When the sweet baby outgrows her car seat, I was thinking we could just take off the bows and she could use it as a play blanket.  However, our friend, Pam said the loops would be good for small motor play, and who doesn't love to zip and unzip velcro?

This was such fun, I have two more in the works, which I need to complete before the cool fall weather moves in.
Peace.