Another Thursday morning!  It seems like the week has just flown by!  As I sit here in my pj's wondering what to do this weekend, I know that it should be on starting prep work for the trip we will be taking in a couple of weeks. 

I have watched my son's sleeping habits in the car lately and have noticed how his neck is craned over and it just looks so uncomfortable.  I can't stand to see him like that, so about a week ago I had this brilliant idea to make a Seat Pet look-a-like.  I didn't care if it looked exactly like it, but wanted the ability to make sure his head had a pillow to sleep on.  I did want to make it so it would cover the seat belt in front of him to make sure it didn't fall down.  The first one I made the head was too small.  It worked, but his head would fall off easily.  Plus when he wasn't using it, the head would flop down.  So I got the idea to make the pillow head bigger and then add a flap with Velcro to hold it on the seat belt too. 

The original Seat Pet has a cushier body and a pocket with a zipper to hold stuff, but like I said, I don't think he needs that.  Plus I didn't have a ton of time to figure it out.  Or a ton of supplies to keep trying. 

So here's his new Seat Belt friend.  His is a black and white puppy.  I made the whole body from black cotton.

I made the strap cover 9 inches wide.  I wanted to have 2 3/4 flap on either side of the middle 4 inches. That way there would be 5 inches of fabric to fold around the seat belt.  I used a pillow sewing method to build the seat belt cover portion.  Once I had it sewn up on three sides, I slipped in some natural cotton batting.  Then I just put it under the sewing machine taking care to fold the seam in toward the batting.  I sewed a straight line right on top.  Then I added the Velcro strips.  I took my flaps and placed them folded the way that they would be on the seat belt, then sewed my Velcro strips appropriately.   Then came the head.  I basically did an 8 inch oval.  I had previously done a 4 inch oval, but that wasn't big enough.  I also didn't line the first one and the stuffing started to try to come out slowly.  So I wanted to make sure that didn't happen again.  This time I added a lining to make sure that didn't happen again.  I didn't want to use the cotton again afraid that it would still poke out, so I used some satin I had lying around.  I just cut four pieces total of the head.  Two of the cotton and then two of the satin.  I cut two 4 inch pieces of cotton and used the same method as the seat belt cover.  I sewed on the Velcro to one side of the flap. Then on one of the pieces of cotton, I stitched the flap on.  Then using the flap, placed the other side of the Velcro and stitched it on the head.  I sandwiched them together putting the cotton with the fronts facing each other, then on either side placing the satin lining on the top and bottom of the cotton with the front facing out. 

Then I sewed those layers together leaving an opening to pull it inside out.  I wanted to make the eyes stand out, so I cut some felt and then sewed them on using a running stitch.  Then I added the button eyes and sewed on the mouth. Once done, I filled with Poly-fil stuffing.  It comes in a bag and when you pull some out it looks like little balls of batting.  I stuff it to the desired firmness.  I made sure mine was pretty firm.  I used the invisible stitch method to close it up.  I added the ears and then stitched on the tongue.  I then stitched it to the seat belt cover using the invisible stitch.  I did that on both side of the head and seat cover. 

And Voila!  You have your very own Seat Pet!  If you want, you could make a stitched tube in the center of the seat belt cover and stuff it.  The originals also had arms and legs. 

Here are the pictures of mine.

 

 

I hope you find this helpful.  Have a wonderful day!