Highchair Re-Do

Back before Kaypha was even a twinkle in my eye, we decided we wanted to get a high chair to have at home so that when our friends who did have kids came over for dinner their kids would have somewhere to sit. We were lucky to be able to get a highchair off of Freecycle:

It's used and while it's not super stylish, it did a great job. When my cousin moved to town, though, we let her take it and after a year and a half of daily use, it's falling apart. The vinyl is worn (that's not glare in the picture...the light spots are where the color has rubbed off), hard and crunchy and cracking.

It's gotten so bad that her daughter had to sit on top of a towel on the cracked cover to keep from cutting up or irritating her legs. That's no good. So I took it home and decided I'd try to make a new cover.  I think it turned out alright

The fabric is way cuter at any rate.  Here's how I did it:

Step 1: Make a Pattern

I laid the old cover out on my roll of craft paper (which I picked up for $1 in the postal supplies section of the Dollar Tree...you could also use opened up grocery sack). I centered it and traced around half and cut it out:

Step 2: Prep The Pieces
After making the pattern, I needed to cut out 4 things:
   * 2 pieces of fabric
   * 1 piece of fusible vinyl
   * 1 piece of quilt batting

I cut out the fabric and quilt batting by folding the fabric in half and laying the midline of the pattern along the fold:

I didn't want to crease the vinyl, so after cutting out the fabric, I traced around it on the paper backing of the vinyl.  Then I followed the instructions to fuse the vinyl to the fabric to laminate it to make it easy to wipe off.

The last piece I needed was a piece to run along the back to hold the cover in place. I just followed the basic line of the original back piece and then trimmed the edge that will be exposed with a piece of bias tape.

Step 3: Assemble the Cover
I was planning to use bias tape to trim the whole thing out, so I conveniently didn't have to do right sides together and flipping and oragami. Just stack everything in this order:
   * Vinyl laminated fabric face down
   * Quilt Batting
   * Regular fabric face up
   * Back Piece

Then just sew around the outside.

Once the cover was sewn together, I laid it out and added some quilting lines (which in retrospect, I could have done a way better job with lining up and making symmetrical and all) that mirrored the lines on the original cover

When I was done, I trimmed the whole thing out in teal bias tape. To do the bias tape, I think Smashed Peas and Carrots has the best how-to tutorial out there. Check it out if you are a bias tape newbie. Here's my bias tape in-progress:

Done!

Honestly, my sewing skills are novice at best but I'm happy with it. Now little miss Pickle can have somewhere to sit that won't bug her skin. Plus the fabric is way cuter, too.