Friday, March 5, 2010

Simple Seat Belt Cover

Kellie is a wife, mom, crafter and blogger extraordinaire. Her blog is Greenhab: the Browns go Green and she also blogs regularly at the Green Phone Booth.

The Browns have been seen around town lately sporting our clunker 1991 Ford Explorer. It's certainly not fancy but, since the engine blew in our nicer(ish) family car, it's gotten us from place to place and through two weeks of snow. (Anyone remember when you had to get OUT of the car to turn on the 4WD? Yeah, 'nuff said.)

ANYway... I always thought that a seat belt was a seat belt was a seat belt, but the ones in this car seem to be choking all of us. I thought it was just me, until the older kids started complaining about it too. My quick fix was to make little fleece seat belt covers for all of us. These are so easy that you can crank one out in under 10 minutes - and do it by hand too if you don't have a sewing machine

For this you'll need some fleece and some stick-on velcro. You could definitely use another soft material like flannel, but I think you'd need to add some padding to it.


First you'll cut two circles of your fleece. A seat belt is something weird like 1 & 13/16 inches wide, so I rounded up to 2", and made the whole circle 6". (I assume all seat belts are a standard width, but you might check yours just to be safe!)



Pin your circles together and sew, leaving a hole to turn it out. (After doing these I realized it would have been even easier to just sew the two pieces together, then trim the edges using pinking shears. I'll definitely be doing that next time!)



Next mark a line two inches in from each side, making sure the the two lines are 2" apart. Sew along each line so that the whole thing folds easily.

Add your stick-on velcro and voila! You now have something that looks like a little burrito....or a feminine product I guess.



Makes driving much more comfortable!


7 comments:

  1. Great! I'm kinda short which makes that darn seatbelt always cut into the side of my neck. I like this idea for some extra cushion. Would be great for the tiny tots riding in my back seat too. Thanks!

    http://commoncentshome.blogspot.com/

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  2. That is officially cool! When I wear tanks in the summer, the seat belt rubs.

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  3. OMG! I so need one of those. I'm always fussing with my seatbelt because it's cutting into me.

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  4. Love it! I'm short too and the belt always cuts into my neck.

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  5. Fantastic tute!!! I love it!!!

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