Car Seat Cover

 Okay, I am crazy.  Can't believe I pulled it off but I did.  I re-upholstered Elisa's car seat about a month ago.   Before that I had been browsing through a bunch of crafty blogs and discovered that you can make a car seat cover yourself,  but I was too scared to attempt it.  But I was getting SO TIRED of the ugly tan/animal print on hers.  We had bought the car seat second hand and used it for Elisa's big brother Gabe.  It had it's day.  And it didn't make me feel any better about it up next to her friend's car seat, who's got a zillion compliments everywhere they went: 

My mom came to visit me and I tossed the idea around seriously for a few days then decided to go for it while my mom was here helping with the kids.  So I went to Joannes.  I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but I wanted the soft minky fabric for sure and a bold, striking fabric to go with it.  It was love at first sight when I came across the fabric.  Black, pink and gray, plus sparklies in the fabric! So I bought a yard and a half of that, 1 yard of the soft pink minky fabric, thread, and pink bias tape.  The minky fabric was the most expensive, and it all totaled to about $30.
I went to work that day tearing apart the old fabric.  I had to be careful though because I needed the exact measurements of the old fabric and I also needed to reuse the batting. I took pictures mainly for my reference later so I could remember how to put it back together:

Sorry I do no have any photos of me actually working on it.  I was working insanely fast to get it done.  This type of project was not one that could be set aside and worked on later.  I needed it done so Elisa could have a car seat to go places in! I worked on the car seat cover until 1 am the first night, woke up around 7:30 am and finished around 10:00 am the next day.  And that was just the car seat cover.  That night I worked on the canopy from 7 until midnight (not straight...I do have two kids to take care of!).  Then it was finally done! YAY!!! It was such a relief to be rid of the ugly boy fabric and to have a cute car seat cover:

 NO.  Beautiful and ugly do not go together!

 YES!

So...$30 and about 8 hours of work went into Elisa's car seat.  Though it wasn't extremely difficult to make, it was a lot of work because there were a lot of steps involved.  But it was way cheaper then buying one that's for sure.  The cheapest I've seen on Etsy went for about $60 (I don't know how much shipping costs or if it includes the canopy or not) and just went up and up from there.  My friend said she paid $180 for hers.  I'm glad I could make one for Elisa and now we get compliments all the time!!