New Car - New Car Seat covers

Don't you just love it when you go on holidays and come home to find that your car will no longer start.  Getting to spend your first day at home organising a tow truck, waiting around garage waiting rooms, spending hundreds of dollars.  Yep that's what happened to me this summer, so I finally said enoughs enough, a new car is required.  That was then followed by a month or so of research, what sort of car do I want? what exactly do I need from my car? how much is it going to cost? and last, but certainly for me at least the most important consideration - what colour will it be?

After much delibrating I finally decided to buy a new car this time rather than a second hand car, my very first brand new car, which means that, for the first time I actually get to choose the colour.  It was all rather exciting  I of course ruled out the grey, silver, black and white options - how utterly boring, and the blue option was so close to black that it was out too - which left me with red.  Sounds great, a nice bright red car, what more can you want.  Well that's easy a choice of interior colours would be nice.  Unfortunately the red car only comes with a sand interior.  Sand, thats white, or close to, just what you don't want with two kids in the car, white car seats.  So the first order of business once I picked up the new car.  A trip to the craft store for some new yard.  Car seat covers are required.

I remember growing up each time we got a new car, my mum would get out the knitting needles and knit new car seat covers.  I loved those yellow knitted car seat covers, so when I decided I needed car seat covers for the new car, rather than just going out any buying some I decided that I would make my own. I briefly thought about knitting them like my mum did, but quickly decided that crocheting would take a lot less time and effort. The colours were of course chosen by the kids.  J wanted plain red and L chose a purple blue mix.  The red yarn was a cheap acrylic bought in pound rolls. and the blue purple was red heart super saver acrylic.

It's taken me a lot longer than I thought it would to make them but the seat bases for the two front seats are done finally.

The pattern was pretty much made up as I went along.  Starting in the center I made a magic loop and 4 single crochets.  I then worked in a spiral outward increasing the number of sticths each round by making three stitches in every corner.  I started out with single crochets but as I worked my way out I then increased to double crochets and finally to triple crochets around the front.

Once my square was the size of the base at the back I then created the desired shape by only crocheting on three sides, tapering off at the end of each row.  When the flat area was the right size I then started back at the back corners and crocheted around the front three edges without the increases at the corner.  I continued in this fashion, again tapering each row off at the ends to create the desired shape.  Once I had the cover to the size I wanted I went back to the beginning of the side and made a row of single crochet stitches, over a length of rolled elastic, around the sides and front to hold the cover in place.  The elastic was pulled taught to hug the seat and the back of the cover is tucked under the back of the seat.

I still need to do another two of these for the back seats, and then I have to figure out what I want to do about the seat backs.  I'd love to crochet covers for them too but I'm already sick of this project.  I'm starting to think granny squares in the same yarn may be the way to go, then I wont have to do it all at once.