DIY Boppy Cover

In the midst of my many sleepless nights, I have been sewing more than usual.  One of my most recent creations was inspired by my lovely sister who sent me a boppy earlier on in the week.  I already had one store-made boppy cover, but decided that I should totally learn how to make one myself.  So off to the lovely land of pinterest I went in search for an easy tutorial.  It only took me about two seconds before I found a tutorial that suited me and my sewing capabilities.  This tutorial from the Vanilla Joy blog seemed extremely easy and even included some nifty little pattern pdfs which ended up being very handy.  So I think it cutting out the pattern pieces and taping them together took almost as long as making the actual cover, which might make you think that it was difficult, but in-fact, the entire project was very easy!


Anyways, I decided to use two different types of fabrics in my cover because I have been itching to use the remainder of my fabric stash.  One fabric was a sturdy cotton and the other is a minky.  I actually have a blanket already made out of these fabrics, so I figured the cover would be a great matching piece.

After picking the fabrics, fold both pieces in half and place the pattern on the folded edge of the fabric.  This is so that once you have cut everything out the fabric will be in a nice u-shape.  You will notice that one of the u's has the top cut off.  That is because you will be sewing a zipper to allow for the pillow.  Once you have cut everything out, make sure all the pieces line up nicely.

Before you do anything else, it's time to sew in that zipper.  Take the fabric that has its top cut off and iron a 1/2 inch hem at the points in which the fabrics should be connected.  Once you have done this unzip the zipper all the way to its edge and pin it along the hems.  Make sure you match the zipper side to the fabric side.  It would totally stink to have the zipper inside out!  After everything as been pinned, take out your nifty zipper foot and get ready for fun.  Straight stitch sew the zipper to the fabric.  It should look super neat once it's done.

Now that you have finished with the zipper you can move on to the easiest part.  Close the zipper half way so that you can get an idea how how the fabric will fit together, then place the two fabrics you have chosen pattern side inwards and pin both fabrics along their edges.  This shouldn't take but a minute or two.  Once you have finished, use your straight stitch to sew around the entire edge of the cover.  I ended up doing a little more than a half inch seem because my fabric pieces were a little big (you will notice in the pictures).  After you have back stitched your last bit of the cover, trim all of the threads and turn it right-side out.  Check and see if it fits your boppy and then trim the hems on the inside.  If you want an even more finished look, make sure to iron it afterwards.  It probably took me a little over an hour to completely this project and I felt pretty good about it afterwards.  I will definitely scale down my fabric next time so that my cover wont bunch quite as much, but really it's a little easier for it to be bigger than too small.

I hope that you get a chance to try to make one of these sometime.  It was super easy, especially with the directions found on Vanilla Joy and it was definitely fun.