Carseat Canopy

You probably already follow Char's blog: Crap I've Made.

Her header says: sometimes it's amazing, and sometimes it's just crap.

I feel the same way with my projects, and unfortunately, a good idea that could have been amazing, today is just crap. 

But I'll show you anyway in case you want to fix the problems to make an amazing canopy for yourself or a friend.  I'm just too lazy and it's functional so we'll just be sporting around town in a crappy carseat cover, which is fine by me.  Keeps the elements off my baby and hopefully the weird stangers that just reach in and touch your infant too.

There are many carseat cover tutorials around, but the two I mainly used were from:

Sutton Grace

and Do It Yourself Divas

My canopy is made with a dandelion flannel print, and just white broadcloth on the bottom.

My great idea that stunk it up was to have a dandelion applique in one corner.

But first here's the whole thing laying flat.  I made a white ruffle around the border to try to make it girly since it's a baby blue.

Then the handles in the center close with velcro and have decorative white buttons for show.

You can see after I washed it, the two layers didn't lay flat anymore, the flannel is all baggy.  Both had been prewashed, but must have still had room for shrinkage I guess.  So that was problem #1.

Now for the crappy dandelion applique.

My first problem was trying out the reverse applique method for the stem, where I sewed the shape through both layers and just cut off the blue flannel to leave the white beneath.  It became distorted and the white center is all baggy and lame.  I should have just kept with a regular applique adding it on top.

I did like the buttons in the end for the globs at the ends, but too bad the rest looks like bonch.

But it works.  Maybe from a distance you can't tell how bad it is.