Part 2: Assembly, advanced.

Here's the second way to assemble your pod. A little more time spent sewing, but cleaner seams in the end.

Use the width of the strap to estimate how much of the blanket to fold down for the headrest.














Make a little mark on the blanket where the bottom of the headrest will be.














Turn the edges of the headrest once and sew almost to your mark. It should look like this, with the raw edges still exposed.





















Cut a piece of heavy canvas the size of your [folded over] headrest.














Fold the headrest over (right sides together) with the strap in between, right side down. You did cut your straps long enough to meet in the middle of the headrest, right? Leave this sticking out of the edge of the blanket, with the rest of the strap in the middle. Your basting line should be inside the folded layers at this point.














Pin and sew the side edge only. I like to use a triple stitch for this.















Alright, stay with me. You're halfway there!
Fold the end of the strap back over onto the canvas.














Hold the end of the strap and the canvas together, pull the blanket out of the way.















Make sure the strap and canvas are laying flat together from your last seam, and reinforce until you can't reinforce any more. I like to do straight and diagonal stitching, as well as some bartack at the edges.















Fold the blanket back under the headrest, insert the other strap with the end sticking out, pin and sew.




















Fold the end of the strap back onto the canvas, and lift it up away from the blanket.



















Reinforce just as you did the other strap. If your sewing machine has a free arm, now would be a good time to use it.



















After you've reinforced the second strap, cut away any extra strap material where they meet in the middle, so it's nice and flat.



















Turn the headrest right side out, and take out your basting stitches. At this point, if you wanted extra padding, you could cut it and insert it into the headrest. I like a layer of Warm & Natural cotton batting - I cut it 2x the height of the headrest and fold it around the canvas/strap ends. No pics of this, since I didn't use padding on this pod. But I'm sure you can use your imagination.




















On the back side, sew the headrest closed along the bottom. Remember when you turned the side edges of your headrest edges under once? Now that the top is sewn, the edges are double-turned and waiting for you to sew them! Oblige by sewing down each side.

















Reinforce through the headrest as well - on this one, I used a rectangle. Three or four straight lines across would work just as well.














Congratulations! I knew you could do it.














Grab your baby and go for a spin!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU! I just finished my wrap pod and your directions were perfect!