Behold Our New Jogging Stroller

Ta-Dah! Our brand new jogging stroller! Or should we say, brand new stroller cover! Isn't she a beauty! Yeah, I decided this jogging stroller is a girl, it has cute black and white floral fabric for my little caterpillar. Well, I wanted to take some in progress pictures, but there is nothing special about making this cover. I just took the old one apart, using them as pattern to cut new fabric and batting, then sew them back just like the old one! Not hard, just tedious! But it's absolutely worth all my efforts, both Stubborn and little caterpillar loved it! She even climbed up and sat in it while I was still installing it. Stubborn worried about me making it too girly (won't match the black frame), or screwing up entirely, so I was very happy that he liked my fabric choice. Although I had a totally different color combination in mind, I couldn't convince myself to buy new fabric, while I have a huge stash in the basement already. I wanted this new seat to be as strong as it could possibly be, so that ruled out all my lovely cotton and linen. I bought lots of those sample square upholstery fabric ($.50 each) at the old FabricPlace before it closed down. I loved that place, and was devastated when I heard the news, but I seized the opportunity and bought tons of fabric on super deep sales. Anyway, I think I used about $10 worth of my fabric (plus some new batting) to make this new cover. Still have some leftovers for the shade, if I can figure out how to take it apart. For now, our lovely "new" jogging stroller just have to stick to the ugly old shade! But at least it's blackish (very faded), so not so obvious. I reused the original straps and buckles, so I don't destroy the integrity. I also reused the old mesh for ventilation. I couldn't reuse the old bias tape, so I made my own with the same stipe fabric. Some extra batting, and Wa-lah! This is how it looks like when the back is totally lowered. Remember I said some extra batting? That sounded like a great idea, provides extra comfort for my girl. But it's not that great at the end of the process. The last step I did was fold the bottom and fold it again to create a pocket to hold the seat frame. There are 2 layers of fabric and 2 layers of batting before folding, and there were 4 times that after all the folding! I couldn't even feed them into my sewing machine! The result, I squeezed and pushed and pulled one side through, and broke my needle! I couldn't find all my sewing machine attachments (all in one small bag), I had to finish it by hand. See, not so good looking, but it will hold until I find a new needle.
There you have it, story about our new "old" jogging stroller. If I ever figure out about the shade there will be another post for that, otherwise, this is it! I am done! Finally one item off my to do list. Again, here is the before and after picture! I just love to staring at it, and feel proud of myself!