Leather Headbands

We were on vacation last week and I need a project for those times when we just sit around with nothing to do. We were camping you see, there is down time, relaxing time...
We picked out a few purses from the DI (local thrift store) and some head bands from the dollar store.

This was my first one. I did figure out that my hand stitching is not a good as I would like. I could have done this twice as fast at home with the machine! But you do what you have to out living in the dirt. I did have a hot glue gun. HA!

My SIL took an attempt at joining me in the purse destruction. Um I mean reconstruction. (Much to JuJu's dismay she really really wanted that green purse. I think she still took off with a white purse as I have yet to get my hands on it!)

I copied Ruffles and Lace's headband for this next one. I was in the mountains so I didn't have the tutorial handy. I went off memory. Seems I put it together different, but it came out pretty much the same. We used the handle of the purse for the headband part on this one and the stitching that was on the purse for part of the bow...



That's all so far, but today we are making zipper flowers...so tomorrow come back for more hair pretties!

New Car Seat Cover

I forgot to take a before picture so you could truly appreciate what it looks like now. Just imagine a brown faded holy cover to this...

Please disregard the dirty floor {embarrassed}

It took about 4 hours! A little longer than I wanted to take, but I did have to do some unpicking :(
It took one yard of fabric for $5.99 and I used Headvisor material foam stuff (forgive me I don't know what they called it, but it is for automobiles from Hancock) for the seat bottom as it was worn through where the little legs hang down.

You ready to recover one too? Here is how I did it.

1. I unpicked the old cover (making mental note of how it went together, which didn't go over well since I had to unpick, hehehehe) I used it for a pattern giving myself an extra 1/2" around.
   
2. I then pinned everything to the old seat cover parts. Adding an extra layer of foam to the seat bottom.
   
3. I stitched the button holes.
4. Then I ran a basting stitch around each pattern piece connecting the new fabric to the old piece...this makes for a perfect fit. Then I trimmed all the fabric to match the old seat cover parts.
   
5. I sewed it all back together. The top to the bottom, then the sides, then the outsides.
   
6. I used FOE along the top and bottom to cover the edges. I had purchased green fabric to make binding and that would have worked as well, just got lazy I guess. You could also just go all the way around...which I did on the infant seat I did earlier with bias binding.
   
7. I didn't go all the way around because I had serged the pieces down the sides. Through the middle I added some FOE pulling it so it would stretch over the edge just to make it a little more snug, the old seat cover didn't have this and flipped up a lot.
   

I love that this seat has those plastic covers there on the back. Keeps everything snapped in place and covers those button holes.

Now V wants her seat recovered too. Maybe next week.
So lets go recover!!