Teensy alterations can make all the difference…

Every artist should have a smock, but I draw the line at living in a garret.
I got this great smock top for £3.25 from a charity shop on Friday and although I loved the top part, the bottom was a crazy gathered bubble hem that gave me more hips than I deserve.

I buttoned it up to the bottom and it was like a hobble skirt! Ok, so you’re probably not meant to wear it like that but either way it made me look a little like Andy Pandy.

I didn’t want to mess with it too much, so I just cut off the hem and re-hemmed it straight.

It’s very comfy and yes, it’s still quite Andy Pandy now I’ve lodged that image in your head, but I’ll be wearing it with a belt to avoid that and the obvious maternity look.

The only other thing is I might have to re-sew all the buttons – who bothers putting on anchor buttons but forgets to orient them the right way. Sideways anchors? It’s only a little thing but it annoys the bejingers out of me!
Beccy

Crochet car seat covers finished!

So, I dropped a cake (icing down of course) on the passenger seat of my car… and then Elle did the same thing. It was the stupid cake tin’s fault and it was such a beautiful lemon cake with lemon butter icing that I had baked the day before and we were taking to a friends house.

We ate the cake anyway because it was a nice cake and the germs don’t stick if you pick it up within 2 seconds right? But buttercream is very hard to get out of seat covers so I decided to crochet some lovely new seat covers to cover the stain. I was always going to anyway, but now I had a reason.

Some people pimp their rides with giant speakers and weird blue lights underneath, not me.

The hexagons are motif 30 from Edie Eckman’s Beyond the square, but only the first two rounds because I think smaller is cuter. I crocheted a lot of them before I actually bothered to measure the carseat, and even when I did I had to make a fair few more.

Doesn’t look like much so far but I wanted to show you a work in progress pic - I was making it up as I went along! (and you can just see the water stain in this pic, where I had tried to clean the buttercream off)

And the final covers. What you can’t see in the photo is that I made them a bit like box cushions but without a base and a back, and then I crocheted a final row around the bottom with a loop every 5 stitches or so. I made a long chain to thread through all the loops and tied it behind the seat.

All done! They took a couple of months because I was winging it but I’m pretty pleased with them – I want to make covers for the backs now but I might have to do something a bit simpler.

Note: Make them slightly smaller than you need because they will stretch!

Edited to add:

I was asked for a picture of the edging so here you go!

The loops are formed by chaining 5 then single crochet into the next stitch. Single crochet 4 more then form another loop.

The loops on the points are chain 5 then single crochet into the same stitch.

Beccy