Thursday, April 24, 2014

Re~Covered Car seat

Before.....



After.....


I picked up my new grandson's car seat from a buy sell ad .It was in great shape, and a great price, however black and gray was just too dull and drab for our new prince.So I set out to the fabric store to see what I could find. I knew I wanted leopard, so I started with that fabric, and the just went round and round to find some other patterns to match. Here is what I ended up with...















Now on to taking the one off the car seat to wash and recover.  I discovered  that the fabric was glued to the foam meaning if you want to re-use the foam (which I did) then you have to cover up the old fabric instead of removing it.  .I used the gentle cycle and cold water and I did put it in the dryer.It came out fine and felt good to have a nice clean seat to start with and wasn't just covering up icky stuff.It also gave me the opportunity to wash the actual plastic underneath.  

Once my seat was clean I started to figure out which pattern I wanted where.I had gotten a half of a yard of all fabric except the leopard, which I got a full yard of.

I then  cut the fabric pieces using the original for a pattern and adding a half inch for seam allowance.
Sew the fabric to the foam, really close to the edge .
There are going to be triple fold bias tape added to re-enforce, so this step is just to secure the fabric 
temporarily.
I sewed really close to the edge to make sure this seam is covered up by your following seams so it's never 
seen. Once my fabric is on I trim it, it  should be exactly the right size for a perfect fit.
I also did not  remove any of the elastic.  It has elastic to hold the seat snugly on the frame and it was attached to
the back of the foam and I knew I'd need to re-attach it anyway so I just left it on, it made a couple pieces
tricky to work with but in the end it worked perfectly
Once my new fabric was all sewn on and trimmed I re-assembled the seat....
So now it looks like this.