DIY seat cover for our new Jeep

Well we got a new to us Jeep Wrangler on the 2nd of January 2012. I have wanted a Jeep Wrangler for a long time. We got a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. The color is taupe exterior/ black interior. It has cloth seats inside and I just didn't like the way they looked. I tried to find some seat covers to just cover them up. Well I could have done that if I wanted to spend $200.00 or more. I am a crafty person so I thought why don't I just make my own?

The first thing I had to do was to take some seat measurements. This is the back bench seat measurements.

This is the measurements I took for the front bucket seats.
I needed 2 of the front part of the bucket seats and I needed 2 of the back part. I needed 4 pieces of the black side pieces to the front bucket seats. I needed 2 of the bottom seat covers for the front bucket seats. I needed one bottom and one top piece for the back bench seat. I added this up and decided I needed 8 yards of fabric. The fabric I used was 45" in width.

I wanted something cute, colorful, and one of a kind. My sweet hubby let me go for it so off the the fabric store I went. I found a cute cotton fabric with monkeys on it. It seems I am kind of crazy about monkeys since our grandson was born last August 23rd and I made all the bedding and room decorations for him. The theme for all his bedding was monkeys.

This is the pattern I made using some tissue paper I had on hand from old gift wrap. I took the measurements and made sure I marked the front and back. I marked where the seat belt receiver was. I would suggest that when I make new seat covers I will just make slits on each side of the seats instead of trying to make cut outs in the right place.( I'll show this later.

Just another picture of the front bucket seat bottom section. I made the front and back seat covers in two pieces.

You hopefully can see here where I cut out a hole for the seat belt receiver. It doesn't fit well and I plan on taking the seat covers off and redoing them with the cut out like in the nex picture. That way I can attach a couple loops on each side to pull the seat cover tight. 

This picture shows where I will put the new cut out. That was the middle back of the front bucket seat cover can be pulled through opening, and the sides of the cushion seat cover can be pulled tightly with bungies as well. This will give a tighter seat cover fit. 

This is the pattern for the back bench seat. The inside line is the measurement for the main seat and the extra is to go over the edge and to have an elastic fitting.

Just another picture.

Picture shows markings for front and back.

Front bucket seat cover pattern. I used the same pattern for the front and back pieces. I just made the back piece a little smaller. (about an inch)

This is the top part of the bench seat. I did it the same way by adding extra for the elastic casing to pull seat cover around seat.

Another picture. This one shows I made a marking for the seat release which is on the top of the back bench seat. I marked it on the fabric but didn't cut it out till I fitted to finished piece on the back seat and marked around the seat release.

Then I did the hard thing. I started cutting the fabric parts. I think this is the hard part cause once you cut you could really screw everything up. Well it all turned out ok. This is the part I worried about the most. How to attach the front and back of the bucket seat pieces together. I wanted to make it a solid color to add some contrast and detail. I decided to go with black. I ended up cutting a basic shape and made sure it was larger than needed. I'll show you more later on how I put it all together.

More cut out pieces. This is one of the back seat pieces.

This is the bottom seat cover piece for the front seat.

This picture shows where I will make the modifications to my seat covers next time. I will probably end up taking these off and doing the same to these.

I went around all the pieces with my serger. This is a great machine. I really appreciate my hubby for letting me get it. It makes putting a casing in really simple. I just serged around the edges and the edges that need elastic I folded over about and inch and stitched them down with two rows of stitching.

Here is that serging and stitching.

Here is another.

Well you heard me say I wanted something cute. The monkey fabric was already cute, but I wanted to make them really one of a kind. I found a picture of a monkey in a coloring book. I enlarged it with our printer and made another copy. Then I kept one altogether, and I cut the other one up.

This is a picture of the pieces I cut up. I wanted the eyes to be white, the main part of the face to be tan and a brown nose and body and mouth.

Here is me sewing the monkey parts on. Let me first tell how I did this though. I cut the parts out. There were 3 brown bodie pieces, 3 tan face pieces, 3 noses, and 6 eye pieces. I ironed on some fusible webbing like wonder under. Then I attached all the parts so they were all one piece. I figured out where on the seat covers I wanted them to be and ironed them on. Then I took them to my trusty sewing machine and sewed them on with a very tight zigzag stitch. I went around twice to get a bold stitch around the pieces. I use a pen I get at Wal-Mart that disapears when it gets wet. What a cool invention. With this pen I marked where the eyeballs, and mouths should be and I just stitched over them a couple times. With the eyeballs it was hard to get them right with just the zigzag stick so I used my freemotion stitching foot and lowered the feed dogs. They turned out great.

Here I was attaching the loops. These were on the back of the seat covers and two or three on the front. They need to be where needed to pull the seat covers into place.

This is a picture from the front. I just used a zigzag stitch.

This was the seat I was looking least forward to making. Once I got all the parts ready I sewed the front and back pieces together at the top. I layed it over the seat with the wrong side out. (see the cute monkey)

Then I took my over sized side pieces and I started pinning them to the front and back pieces. I had to do this a little at a time making sure it was the same on each side. I also had to decide which side I was going to put the monkey waving on. I finished the sewing first then turned the seat covers rightside out. and pulled them over the seat to check the fit. Turns out I got it right. I used a chalk pencil to mark where the seat lift mecanizm was on the side of the chair. I then took the covers off and zigzag stitched a couple times aroung that and cut the center. They were done. I got my hubby to help me put them on the seats for the remodel to be complete. We used the mini bungie cords and strapt them on.

This is the back seat. They are a little loose, but I think I'll just tuck them in better.

 

Here is a picture of the front window looking in. I love them and will be able to wash these when they get dirty, or make some new ones since I have all my patterns.