Car Seat Cover Sew Along: Week 1

Welcome to week one of our Car Seat Cover Sew Along! This week we'll cover three things: making a paper pattern piece for your car seat, designing your covers using a couple of online tools, and estimating the fabric and supplies you'll need to pull the whole project together.

A quick note before we dive in: this is very much a "make it work" project. It doesn't need to be perfect — we're just aiming for something that looks cool, so don't put too much pressure on yourself as we go! This project is a great way to grow those figure-it-out-as-you-go muscles.

Create Paper Pattern

The very first step is making a paper pattern of your car seat. Any paper works here — leftover fabric-print test sheets, wrapping paper, newspaper, packing paper, whatever you've got lying around.

Lay the paper over the seat and press it in so it follows all the little indents. Then trace the outline with a Sharpie. This doesn't need to be precise, you're just capturing the general shape. I recommend tracing a bit larger than the seat itself so your finished cover fully covers the seat. Don’t forget to sketch in the lines around the head rest and bolsters. This will come in handy later when you're figuring out how much design space you have to work with. Repeat the same process for the seat bottom.

Once you have your rough tracings, fold each piece in half long ways to create a symmetrical piece. Do you best to line up the sketch lines but don’t stress if it’s not perfect. After it’s folded, trace over the sketch lines to create a more defined cut line. Then cut it out while folded to ensure it is a symmetrical piece. I like to label each piece (seat, front, back) so I don't get confused later.

You can keep the two pieces separate if you plan to make separate pieces for your cover. Or you can add a little strip of paper between the two to connect them. I added about 1” of space between the pieces to allow the cover to tuck in where the back meets the base. Draw a curve between the two pieces and trim down.

With your paper pattern in hand, you're ready for the fun part: designing your seat covers!

Designing Seat Covers

For designing, I used two online tools: QuiltMockup.com and Canva.

QuiltMockup.com lets you pick a quilt pattern and then drop in photos of fabric to see how they'd look pieced together.

For my project, I chose the Crystal Creek quilt pattern by The Blanket Statement. The design gives D20 vibes, which felt fitting since my husband and I both play D&D. The pattern calls for a wide range of colors, but rather than sourcing every one, I combined some of the shapes so I could work with a smaller palette. I curated a nice gradient of six greens that still maintain the essence of the pattern.

I decided to use unbleached for the center pieces, I’m planning to add a raw-edge appliqué number there later. Beyond that, it was a lot of trial and error moving colors around to get a value gradient that reads as shaded on the bottom and lighter toward the top. I mocked it up at baby-quilt size just to work out placement and get a feel for the finished look.

For your seats the sky is truly the limit! You can use blocks from an existing pattern, do something simple like checkerboard or HSTs, or go for classic quilt blocks like a Log Cabin. This project could be a great way to use up some UFO blocks or maybe that king size quilt you started but stalled out on.

Be mindful of the size of your seat and the size of the blocks you’re using. I recommend choosing a block that is 2-5” smaller than the width of your seat and then adding extra background fabric to get it up to size.

Once I got the fabrics figured out, I moved into Canva to get a rough visual of how the design would sit on the actual seat. I saved the mockup image from QuiltMockup, cropped it down to just the block, and played with placement on top of a car seat graphic that canva had. This step is optional, but I found it helpful to visualize what the final seat cover might look like. This can also be helpful to see the scale of a block against the seat.

If making a whole quilt is feeling overwhelming you could use an existing quilt! Thrift stores and antique stores often have tattered quilts that could use a new life. Or maybe you’re someone who just has too many quilts and you could stand to sacrifice one to the quilt gods for your seat covers.

Estimate Fabric and Supplies

With a design in place, the last step for week one is figuring out roughly how much fabric and how many supplies you'll need. We’re just getting a rough estimate this week. Next week we’ll create a detailed cutting list.

If you're using blocks from an existing quilt pattern, the pattern itself is a big help for figuring fabric requirements. If you're winging your own design, you can shop your stash or just plan to buy a little more than you think you’ll need. You could use any leftover fabric to make a console cover or other little accessories to go with your covers.

For my project, the Crystal Creek pattern's baby size uses roughly the number of blocks I needed for the seat design, so I used that yardage as my baseline. I combined some of the colors so I doubled up the quantities on those and I gave myself lots of extra background fabric to make sure I have enough to add to the blocks to make the covers big enough.

For backing fabric, I’ll be playing a little game of "fabric chicken": My seats are about 20 inches wide and the canvas I’m using is 42” wide. I’ll be cutting a length in half to get roughly 21 inches of width per piece. (it’s gonna be close!)

To determine how much fabric I needed for the backing I added the seat's height, the headrest height, the seat base length, and then added ~10” extra for overage and to account for shrinkage. Don’t forget to multiply by 2 since we’re making two seats covers. All together I calculated that I would need 1.67 yds. I rounded up and bought two yards of canvas.

If your seat is wider or you'd rather not play a game of chicken, use the same process to determine the total length needed. Multiply that number by 2 and divide by 36 to get the total yardage needed.

Attaching The Seat Covers

How you attach the cover to the seat will depend a lot on your car. If your seat doesn't have airbags, you can add a big piece of knit fabric to the back to make the cover into a sleeve. If your seat does have airbags, you'll want to make sure those don’t get covered. My husband’s car does have airbags in the seats. My plan is to make the knit sleeve to cover just the head rest and then add some ties lower down the seat. If they end up flopping around too much I’m thinking that I can go back and hand stitch a little piece of velcro to the seat and the seat cover to make sure they stay in place that way.

For the seat base I attached a long piece of elastic that slips around the front of the seat. This has worked pretty well. It does slide around a bit but I’m thinking I could add some of that rubbery shelf liner under the seat to help keep it from shifting around. I also added two ties to the front of the cover that attached to the bar for moving the seat, and two ties where the back meets the base. These tie around at the back of the seat.

In my husband's car I’ll have to do things a little bit differently. I won’t be able to do the elastic with the way his seat is so I’m planning to do a piece of elastic on each side that will come down and clip to the plastic piece at the base of the seat. I’ll still do the ties at the front and at the bottom of the seat.

This is where the figuring it out part really comes in! When you’re out making your paper pattern take some time to look at your seat and start thinking about ways you can attach your covers. We won’t be attaching anything until week 5 so you’ve got some time to brainstorm.

Don’t forget to prewash!

Once you have your fabric be sure to toss it all in the wash. We want to make sure that our seat covers don’t shrink after we make them! For pre washing I like to sew the two raw edges together with a zig zag stitch to create a big tube. This helps prevent things from getting tangled in the wash. Wash and dry your fabric however you plan to wash and dry your seat covers! I personally just do a standard wash and dry with a few color catchers for safety.

Your Goals for This Week

Create a paper pattern of your seat shape
Design your covers using quiltmockup.com or even just creating a sketch, whatever works for you.
Gather your fabric and needed materials and get them washed and dried.

Next week, we'll get into cutting! We will make a cutting list and I’ll share tips and tricks for making cutting a little less stressful and staying organized.

Be sure to tag us if you share on socials, we can’t wait to see your seat covers!

Willow says “you’ve got this!”