Baby its cold outside

Happy new year!  I hope you all are looking back fondly on 2017 and have big plans for 2018!  2017 was a big year for us – we brewed and started raising baby Julius!  We’re excited for lots of baby firsts in the coming year.  Recently Julius has become a very smiley guy.  He started really smiling a couple weeks back – but the smiles were limited to once or twice a day.  Now the little guy seems to smile all the time!  Nothing makes me happier than seeing mister Julius smile!  Of course we cannot wait until he can LAUGH!

In addition to the smiles – this holiday break brought me some sleep!  I actually feel like a real person again!  Will let me sleep in every day while he and Grandma fed the baby from a bottle for the first morning feeding if I wasn’t up yet.  It was glorious!

As always, the first of the new year brings lots of discussion of resolutions.  Since I’m no longer pregnant, I want to get back to running.  It was sad for me to quit running for the past nine months, but unfortunately now that I have the approval to exercise again it is bitter cold out!  The thermometer right now reads 2 degrees!  This means running with Julius in the jogging stroller is out of the question for a while.  Frankly, just walking to the car with the little guy in his car seat makes me nervous!  We bundle him up and throw tons of blankets on top of him for fear of him freezing to death in the 30 second walk to a parking lot or someone’s house.

Recently I made a car seat cover to use while we carry Julius around outside the house.  It is made of cotton, but has a fleece insert you can use for the winter.  If you’re indoors or it is pleasant weather outside you can remove the fleece insert and still keep the sun (and nosy strangers) out of your baby’s face.  I made it a little large so you can tuck it into the carrier.  You may want to make it a foot shorter if you don’t want to do any tucking.

Four Season Car Seat Cover

What you’ll need:

• lightweight fusible interfacing
• 1.5 yards of 56″ or 58″ wide cotton fabric
• 1.25 yards of 56″ or 58″ wide fleece fabric
• 16 snaps

1. Cut a piece of cotton fabric 43″ x56″.  Repeat for fleece fabric.
2. Hem cotton fabric with 1/2″ double fold hem.  Make sure to miter corners.
   

   Hem cotton fabric using double fold & miter corners.

3. Hem fleece fabric with a 1″ single fold hem.  The fleece will not unravel, and the single fold hem will lower the fabric bulk.
   

   Hem fleece with a single fold.

4. Using handle template above, add 1/2″ seam allowance and cut out 4 of cotton and two of interfacing.
   

   Cut handles from interfacing and cotton fabric.

5. Fuse each piece of interfacing to one of the cotton handles following manufacturer’s instructions.
6. Pin handle side with interfacing to a handle side without interfacing.  Repeat for second handle.
   

   Pin handle with interfacing to handle without interfacing

7. Stitch around handle leaving a 3 inch gap along the skinny side of the handle.
   

   Stitch around handle leaving a gap at handle center.

8. Clip curves and corners and turn right side out.  Stitch along 3″ gap to close it.
   

   Turn handle right side out through gap and stitch gap closed.

9. Fold the cotton cover in half lengthwise.  Mark along the fold, 22 inches in (this should be the center).  Mark 3.5 inches out from the center marking along fold on either side.
   

   Mark 3.5 inches from the center of the cotton fabric, along the width.

10. Center handles along this marking as shown in the picture.  Stitch handles to cotton cover.
    

    Stitch handles to cotton cover.

11. Following manufacturer’s instructions attach snap tops to cotton cover in positions shown in picture.
    

    Attach snaps as shown in diagram above.

12. Repeat for snap bottoms on fleece.
13. Attach snaps to handles so they form loops.  (Snap tops to top side of handle, snap bottoms to bottom side of handle.)
    

    Add snaps to handles.

For mild weather use, attach handles to car seat carrier.  Drape over car seat.  For cold weather use, attach the fleece insert for extra warmth!

Car seat cover attaches to handles using snaps.

Finished car seat cover.

Don’t you just love the frog batik fabric?? I got it for only a couple dollars at a thrift shop!

Little guy is ready to brave the cold! (The car seat cover is folded up above him in this picture while we put him into the carrier).