September 2010

Today's post is a great project that my sister thought up to help solve a very annoying problem...and I know you will all love it!

Hi everyone, I'm Kathryn's sister, Stephanie, and I thought of making a seat belt cover from a hand towel that can help avoid getting your seat belt sweaty after a great workout (especially Bikram yoga!) or after getting caught in the rain.

Supplies you’ll need:

- 1 hand towel (makes two seat belt covers)

- 1 package of 36” sewable Velcro

- scissors

- thread

- sewing machine

Instructions:

So, I’m making two sets, one for me and one for friend I do yoga with. I bought two 2-packs of hand towels at Wal-mart for $3 each. I liked them since they had the corresponding stripes down each end and that is where I’ll make the cover. I like the use of hand towels since there are lots of nice, finished edges. I’ll be making two seat belt covers that are 16” long since I’m using the width of the small edge of the towel, along the stripes. So that means I am only spending $1.50 in each set...what a great frugal gift idea!

First, cut the hand towel in half along the short length.

Cut each piece of Velcro in half, leaving approx. a 15” length. Place one of the halves of the Velcro (I did the Velcro hook side first) towards the finished edge of each half of the towel. I centered it on the width and just behind the finished edge, about 1” from the bottom of the towel.

Sew down the Velcro tape using a sewing machine. I used white thread for the top thread and blue for the bobbin so that it was as hidden as possible.

(Don't you love the Sewing Machine Pin Cushion she has on her machine? If you'd like one click here)

For the next part, you need to choose the finished width of the cover that you’d like and sew the finished edge. Standard seat belts are 2” wide, so I was shooting for 2.5” to allow for seams on each fold later on.

Fold over the seat cover to the desired width to determine where you should trim the extra. I measured 2.5” from the final fold and marked it with a pin. I think I measured an additional 1” for seam allowance. The pins are in the picture at 2.5” and 3.5” pins. I did this on both ends and then cut off the raw edge at the second pin.

After trimming the raw edge, turn up the edge 0.5” twice and pin it in place. Then, sew it in place to create a hem. I switched the top thread to blue to hide the seams.

Then, place the second piece of Velcro tape (make sure it’s the opposite type!) just inside the seam you just sewed. I placed mine as close as possible to the new seam and I folded it over to ensure that the Velcro parts line up to make a 2.5” wide tube. The hem is pretty thick (3 thicknesses of terry cloth), so you’ll probably have to offset it a bit from the hem to allow you to sew around the Velcro tape. Pin the Velcro tape and sew it down like the first strip. I switched back to white as the top thread to hide the seams.

Finally, there is just one step left. I decided to sew two extra seams on each cover to help stabilize the tri-fold of each cover. I sewed in about 3/8” on each edge with a single straight seam so that the cover would always fold to the same place no matter how many times you put it on and take it off the seat belt. This wouldn’t be possible if I hadn’t made it 2.5” wide in the first place.