A Creative Slice: Car Seat Canopy!

I wanted to make my sister something fun for her first baby due this August. Knowing that she would get lots of handmade blankets, I was on the lookout for something unique! Enter the car seat canopy. What a great idea!! Too bad no one thought of this when I had little babies! I definitely wanted to do a rag quilt so the two ideas came together into this beautiful canopy. Perfect for the windy coastal weather where they live!

I found this fabulous online tutorial for a rag quilt here.

These are my pattern details:

• 4 different coordinating fabrics
• Pink flannel for the "batting"
• 6" square blocks sewn with a 1/2" seam.
• The final quilt is 5 squares across by 9 squares long.

Here is the pattern I came up with. Each color represents one fabric.

I chose to also use the same fabric for the back of the quilt, so both sides look the same except the front has the seams showing for the rag quilt look.

You are basically going to make "sandwiches" with the fabric squares. You take one printed square and lay it right side down, add a square of flannel, then top it with a printed square of the same fabric as the bottom layer, but this time it is right side up. You should end up with a sandwich where the printed sides are facing out. Follow the tutorial that I linked to above for more detail on how to sew the pieces together.

I used the pink fabric to make the tabs to hold the canopy on the car seat handle. I used Velcro on the tabs for easy removal. Here is another great tutorial from Sweet and Sassy Girls on how to finish up the canopy and sew the straps on. I had the actual car seat and was able to measure where the straps should go. I'm sure it is relatively close to the same on all car seats. These straps are sewn  at the top of the center row of squares, on the second square from each end. This is indicated by the "x" on the quilt pattern above.

These fabric flowers turned out so cute! Once again I turned to my blogging sisters and after searching hundreds of fabric bows, this was my favorite. Thanks to Pink Paper Peppermints for this detailed tutorial. I took the buttons I had and actually covered them in fabric to match the flowers. I just pulled out my trusty glue gun to do the work. Then I glued them onto the flower petals. Because I wanted to make sure this was washable, I mounted the flower on a small circle of felt and hot glued it on. I then got a needle and thread and stitched the flower to the fabric loop. I tried to catch the flower petals as well. Hopefully all that together will help it hold up to the washing machine, though I did suggest a gentle cycle just in case :)

The longest part of this whole project was cutting out the fabric! Even snipping the seams to create the rag quilt only took a little TV time :) All in all a great project and one I will certainly do again!! It was my baby shower masterpiece!! Now I'm just waiting for some more babies!