DIY stretchy car seat cover

Taking a break from pregnancy/house update/vacation posts to write about a DIY project I recently made.  I fell in love with those striped, stretchy knit car seat covers that seem to be everywhere on blogs and social media right now.  I have a heavier weight car seat cover that I used with Arlo, but for this summer baby I wanted something lighter and more breathable that still allowed me to provide shade and protection when we need to.  I had planned on just buying one of these covers, but realized I could easily make my own for a fraction of the price - and I already had the materials on hand!  I had recently bought several yards of stretch knit material to sew baby hats and headbands, and realized I had the exact amount I needed to whip up a seat cover - and in a striped black and white pattern just like the one I was planing to buy.  I think in times like these it was just meant to be...

I based the size of this cover to fit a Chicco Keyfit 30, but I think it would likely stretch to accommodate most brands of infant car seats.  One of the best things about this project is that it's multi-purposed - it can also be used as a high chair cover, nursing coverup, or shopping cart cover.  It folds up to a compact, lightweight, portable size so you can always have it on hand in the diaper bag.

Ok, on to the tutorial!

DIY stretchy car seat cover

Materials needed:

• lightweight stretch knit fabric - fabric that has a lot of stretch to it works best
• coordinating thread
• scissors

1.)  Start by prewashing your fabric.   Although I don't think stretch knit will shrink too much, it's a good practice to always prewash everything before you sew.

2.)  Cut your fabric to 29" tall by 63" wide, making sure that the width is the stretchy part!  note: if your car seat is larger than a Chicco Keyfit, you may need to cut your fabric a bit wider.

3.)  Fold fabric in half width-wise (see photo below) and lay flat so fold is on left, and fabric is wrong side out.

4.)  Stitch up right side of fabric using a zig-zag or stretch stitch if your machine has one.  (Ignore the pins in the photo below for now, I am about to explain those...)  Your fabric should now be in the shape of a tube with the top and bottom being the open part.

5.)   Keeping fabric wrong side out, lay your fabric flat again.  Measure and pin the corners as I did in the photo below, 8" over from each side and 14" down from the top.  Put a pin in each of those locations and then run pins between them, making a triangle shape.  I used a marking pen and straight edge to draw a line first, then inserted my pins along the line.

6.)  Repeat for other side.

7.)  Sew along the pin lines, again using a zig-zag or stretch stitch.  Now is a good time to mention the walking foot.  I recently purchased one for all the knit fabric projects that I am in the process of making, and let me tell you - it is a game changer!  A walking foot helps to feed the fabric evenly on top and bottom, avoiding the annoying bunching that can otherwise happen when working with knits.  I highly recommend one if you plan to work with this type of fabric often, they run only about $20 at JoAnns.

8.)  Using a rotary cutter (or scissors), cut off triangle of fabric that you just sewed.  Repeat for other side.  note: don't cut off the stitched line that you just sewed!

This is what it should look like at this point:

Hey, guess what?!  You are done!  That's how incredibly easy these are.  Turn it right-side out and pop on your car seat!  The small hole is at the top and the larger hole is on the bottom.  There is no need to hem the top or bottom because this type of fabric will not fray.

See how stretchy it is?  So easy to peek at baby!

I was just a tiny bit sad that I had used up every inch of this fabric that I bought without making a baby hat, which was this materials original intended use.  Well, I had used up almost every inch...  I realized the two cut off triangles could be sewn into a piece large enough for a newborn size hat!

Now, I can say that I used up every inch....

This cover (and hat!) cost only $10 for the fabric, about a third of the price of a ready-made one you might buy online.  It only takes about 10-15 minutes to sew up and would make a great gift as well.  If you make this tutorial please let me know, I would love to see pictures and know how it worked out for you!  Here is a picture I found on Pinterest showing how else you can use a stretchy cover like the one I made:

happy sewing!  :)

8 months

Last night I had a dream that I had the baby (it was a girl in the dream and first we named her Erika and then changed her name to the one we actually have picked out in real life) and in the dream one of my thoughts was "gee, I haven't even written my 8 month pregnancy update yet, how can I have already had the baby?!"  Ha!  So, here's the scoop at 8 months.  Also, I am too lazy to take new photos for this post so I am stealing a few beach pictures from my last post for this update...

Belly is 33 + 2 in these photos, and today I am a little over 34 weeks.  Technically the baby will be full term and could safely be delivered at the birthing center in less than three weeks and that sounds incredibly soon to me! The past two months or so I have been thinking I would be totally happy with an early arrival but I still feel like there are so many things I want to get done before baby arrives that I now would be okay with a couple extra weeks to cross off everything on the ever-growing to-do list.  We are actually pretty close to ready in the baby department - the clothes and diapers are washed and folded, the nursery is painted and organized, and we generally have all the things we need for the first several months whether this baby comes out boy or girl.  We still need to set up the co-sleeper and install the car seat but those are on the list for the next couple of weekends.  Believe it or not, I have also already bought and started a baby book for this little peanut, and have several pages completed (pictures and all) that pertain to pregnancy and the family tree - go me!  I remember feeling such a lack of time for myself after Arlo was born and I know it's only going to be twice as hard with two littles, so I am trying to do as much as I can beforehand while I still have the time.  This past week I even had some of our wedding photos printed and framed, and it's about time - we are coming up on our 5th wedding anniversary in just a couple of months.  Nothing like the impending arrival of baby #2 combined with a strong nesting urge to get all those things done you have been procrastinating for years, ha!

Symptom-wise I am actually feeling better than I was at the time of writing my last post and can say that right now I am feeling pretty good!  My most troublesome symptom is the left rib pain that hasn't really improved.  I think baby's position is such that there is always a foot or knee up under my rib and it's constantly being pushed on.  Sitting and laying on my left side makes it worse but I have found a pillow under my belly at night helps a lot.  I am terrified to write this because I don't want to jinx myself - but somehow I have been sleeping really well lately.  I haven't had to take any sleep aids in a while and feel well-rested throughout the day, which I certainly didn't expect as I progressed through the third trimester!  I haven't had any heartburn lately to speak of and while I am taking it easy in the exercise department (daily walks have been reduced to about 20 minutes instead of the usual 45) my energy level is going strong for as pregnant as I am now.

My most recent appointment with the midwives was a little over two weeks ago.  Belly still measuring on track (32 weeks at the time), and I only gained about a pound since my previous visit, putting me up to a total of 17 lbs gained.  At that appointment I finally got an explanation for why I feel such strong movement from this baby.  The midwife who I saw was one I hadn't seen before, and is actually the director of the birthing center and has a lot of experience delivering babies!  She pushed around (pretty hard!) on my belly and was pretty certain baby is hanging out OP, or sunny side up, but also head down.  So all of his/her arms and legs are right in front, and that combined with my posterior placenta makes it easy for me to feel every little movement.  I asked her if I should be concerned about the OP position but the midwife said she wasn't worried at all and that it was very likely towards the end of pregnancy that he/she would turn the correct way.  And if not - I read on the Spinning Babies website that 87% of posterior babies turn during delivery so I am holding tight to those statistics!

When people have asked my due date throughout this pregnancy, and I tell them late August, they all sigh and say the same thing - "ugh, you have to be pregnant during the hot summer months."  And while I was never really worried about that, I did start to think after all the commentary "is it really going to be that bad?!"  Turns out, I have actually really enjoyed the summer pregnancy and besides the one afternoon I spent outside at the beach during a heat advisory, I haven't been bothered at all by our hot southern summer.  We generally stay inside in the A/C during the hottest part of the day (and would pregnant or not) and have had lots of pool playdates with friends which have been awesome.  Swimming while pregnant is the best thing ever, I feel completely weightless and oh so comfortable!  Also, a summer pregnancy wardrobe is way easier than being super-pregnant in the middle of winter - no jeans, coats, or sweaters to worry about.  Most of my non-maternity summer dresses still fit with room to grow, and my non-maternity lounge shorts and leggings fit comfortably below the bump.  So I only really had to buy a few short-sleeve maternity tops this time around, making putting together my current wardrobe really easy.  

I was planning to write a separate post about this topic, but I honestly don't want to dwell on it too much and realized I already covered so much of it in blog posts as it happened, that I am just going to briefly write about it here.  If  you are interested in reading the details about our breastfeeding journey last time around, you can do so here and here and here and here.  The long and the short of it is, we had a very traumatic experience last time around and those feelings are still with me to a degree.  When I tell people this, I am always met with "oh I know exactly how you feel - breastfeeding was so painful for a couple of weeks and I had to see a LC and everything!"  And not to minimize those hard times for others, but that's not at all what I went though.  I tried literally everything to make the pain that came about when Arlo was two weeks ago resolve, and it never did.  It was a six month journey for us and I was still in pain for several months after that.  We put Arlo through a procedure to correct his tongue and lip ties at three weeks old.  Between the LC's, midwifes, and eventually a breast pain specialist OB/GYN at the hospital, I ended up seeing over a total of eight medical professionals to help me.  I was on over ten different medications to help the pain, and probably another five or so to help with milk production.  I tried nipple shields and four different breast pumps trying to pump milk in the least amount of pain possible.  I pumped every three hours in the early months to try and keep up my supply, and even when Arlo started sleeping through the night I set an alarm to wake me up to pump on that schedule, and in intense pain every single time.  When my supply started to drop we used donor milk, and eventually had to supplement with formula.  When I wasn't caring for Arlo and he was sleeping, I was online googling every possibly thing that might help me feel better.  We literally spent thousands of dollars trying to figure out what was wrong and at the time I was so obsessed with breastfeeding Arlo that I would have paid every penny we had to make it work.  In the end it was thought that my nerve receptors became irritated and inflamed and just couldn't heal between the nonstop cycle of feeding and pumping.  But for those six months I was caught in this really unhealthy obsessive compulsive cycle of how I was feeding Arlo, and you know what?  I am not doing it again.  I don't like the word crazy, but for lack of a better one that's how I felt for the first six months of his life.  And I won't put myself through it again.  Yes, I still agree that breast milk is the very best nutrition for a baby.  And I will make efforts to make it work this time, but the fact of the matter is that there is a high probability that I will experience the same intense pain I did last time around.  If so, I will likely start pumping at the first sign of symptoms, and while this is probably a pretty low goal for many moms - I am hoping to be able to give breast milk for the first month.  If things go better than I think they will and we go longer than that, great!  If we don't even make it to a month, that's okay too.  I don't even think we will make the efforts to seek out donor milk like we did last time and I have made my peace with using formula.  A close friend of mine made her own and has a recipe developed by a pediatrician and approved by ours (her and I go to the same one) and her daughter did amazing on it.  So, I already have the ingredients on hand should we need it.  Some friends of ours who have four kids once told us the secret to having multiple little ones and remaining sane and happy is to set your expectations low, and you will rarely be disappointed, and pleasantly surprised if things go better than planned.  So, while some may say I have a negative attitude about breastfeeding this time around, I would have to disagree.  I feel like I am setting myself up to do the best that I can, and have a solid back-up plan that I am equally okay with.  Next week I am meeting with a LC at the birthing center to discuss breastfeeding this time around, and it's in the birth plan to access for a tongue tie immediately after birth (something we think caused the initial trauma the first time around.)  I have a new hospital grade pump and bottles galore.  So, I think I have done everything that I can at this point to be prepared for whatever comes our way this time around, and the rest is in the hands of nature...

I am hoping in the next couple of weeks to share some photos of the recently updated nursery, as well as Arlo's big boy room that I meant to share a while ago - oops!  And I am going to try really hard to write a final pregnancy update around 37 or 38 weeks, otherwise it will probably never get done!  For now, back to that to-do list...

family beach vacation, 2016 edition

This past weekend we took our very last trip as a family of three.  Since I am approaching the final weeks of pregnancy we will be sticking pretty close to home now until this little one arrives.  For our family trip, we headed back to the same beach that Erik and I visited for our little solo vacation a couple weekends back.  We both agreed that while it's nice to get away for a little alone time, the beach is way more fun when the little man comes along.  To say that Arlo loved it would be an understatement, he had an absolute blast.  He had been talking about going to the beach for weeks and Friday morning when we woke up I asked him if he knew where we were going.  "The beach!" he excitedly replied.  We arrived Friday early afternoon at the motel we had booked for the weekend.  It was just a short two block walk to the beach so we loaded up all our gear into our little portable bike trailer and headed for the water immediately.  Arlo's face when we arrived was priceless, walking over the sand dune revealed the ocean right in front of us and he pointed wide-eyed and said "hey, that the ocean right there!"  ha, way too cute.

The whole afternoon was spent swimming in the water and playing in the sand.  I went a little overboard and bought a million sand toys before our trip but they worked well to keep Arlo entertained the entire time we were there.  The only downside to the whole day was the hot, hot, hot temperature.  We were under a heat advisory and even at the beach the heat index was 101.  I learned later in the day that pregnancy and heat advisories do not mix and ended up feeling quite ill, really weak and nauseated.  After dinner we took a short walk and then called it an early night so I could rest in the A/C and chew on ice cubes to try and cool myself off.

The next morning we headed to the beach right after breakfast so we could avoid the heat of the day.  Thankfully, I felt much better the rest of the trip when I stayed out of the sun when it was the hottest out.

belly is 33 + 2 in these photos

Being at the beach with a toddler allowed Erik and I to act like kids again ourselves.  I taught Arlo how to make those sand towers with the drippy wet sand (a favorite of mine as a kid) and at one point Erik dug a big hole in the sand which was quickly filled by the incoming tide.  The boys had fun playing in it together and the tide pools gave Arlo a chance to play in the water without having to wear his puddle jumper, which he always had on when we were out swimming in the ocean.

After spending all morning at the beach, we headed back to our room for lunch and to let Arlo nap.  When he woke up, we headed down the the aquarium at Fort Fisher.  Arlo is really into fish and sharks right now so we knew this would be right up his alley.  He enjoyed it as much as we thought he would and it was just as much fun for Erik and I to watch Arlo having such a good time.  When we left we went to the gift shop and decided to let him pick out a souvenir from the trip, and basically told him he could pick any toy he wanted.  I cringed at the $16 price tag on the stuffed animals which we actually kind of encouraged him to choose since they were so cute, but Arlo had little interest in those and we walked out with his choice of a small rubber fish that cost only $2, ha!

checking out a frog - but note the bald eagle right behind them!

After the aquarium we had Thai food for dinner and then walked to a little park near our motel.  We treated ourselves to a couple of vegan frozen bananas afterwards and then called it a night as it was already past the little mans bedtime.

 

We headed home the next day, so we spent the morning packing up before making a trip to our new favorite doughnut shop, Wake and Bake.  We grabbed a box of treats and then drove up to Wrightsville beach to visit our friends - including Arlo's little buddy T!  The boys are only a month apart in age and are so cute together.  That being said, they are also at the non-sharing, sand throwing age so there's that too, ha.  Our friends live only a block from the water so we spent part of the morning beach side again before driving back home.

when you can no longer reach all your parts - you employ an official sunscreen applier, ha.

I know this post was total photo overload but I fell in love with so many that we took and again, I'm just trying to remember all the little things about life right now because I know how much it's going to change in just a few short weeks when 2.0 arrives.  I like to think that we will still be able to take our annual fall trip to the mountains this year, but we are hesitant to plan anything right now not really knowing how life is going to look as a family of four.  The rest of the summer will be pretty low key as we finish up a few little projects and wait for this little mister or misses to make their appearance.  Speaking of which, 8 month pregnancy update is coming up next!