Boppy slipcovers

I had some leftover plaid flannel lying around, so I decided to try making my own Boppy slipcover. And since I had to go out to buy a zipper, I figured I’d buy another fabric and make two.

I found the pattern at Economical Baby’s blog. I had trouble downloading it, so she kindly emailed it to me.

Then I had problems with printing. The pattern is a bunch of bits sized for regular paper, then you cut them out and tape them together. There’s grey areas marked for overlap — but for whatever reason our printer wouldn’t print those grey areas.

After several unsuccessful attempts, I gave up on the grey-less bits and went back to the computer. Using PhotoShop I changed the grey parts to a black and white pattern, which printed fine, and then it wasn’t too difficult to tape the pieces together properly.

Here’s the flannel one:

The pattern has a zipper across the back near the top:

For the second one I picked out a subtle vine / floral pink-on-pink calico:

Sewing in the zippers was tricky, but otherwise it’s not a difficult project. Neither one fits perfectly, due to my poor cutting and seaming skills, but they’re both certainly good enough.

This just occurred to me. Sewing the zipper into the one side isn’t that hard. The hard part is when you have to pin the two sides together with the zipper half-open (so you can turn the piece right-side out through that opening). But if you were to close the zipper, stitch the top end closed above the slider, and then open the zipper half way, it would be easier to pin the pieces properly.