DIY Boppy Cover Tutorial

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Ever see these babies at your local fabric store? I call them Jelly Rolls, not sure if that's the official name of them but they remind me of the hay rolls I see often in Kansas so that's what I named them after.
Anyway they are so colorful and always catch my attention when I'm walking down the fabric aisle. I love that they do a wonderful job of finding and coordinating fabrics together and there are so many uses for them. For example I have made an adorable scrap skirt and a few other things out of the scraps. Most jelly rolls come in strips of 2.5"x44".

My mother bought me a boppy pillow and it came with one cover, but I just know that at some point it will have spit-up or some other bodily function residue on it and I will need to wash it, so I wanted to make a back up cover. Since I sew all the time I have tons of fabric laying around and so I thought I would go through my stash and see if there was anything there that I could use. Turns out almost every scrap of fabric I own is WAY to girly for a baby boy boppy cover. Then I saw a jelly roll that I had purchased months ago and never made anything with and then a light bulb went off. I could combine these scraps to make a very original piece of fabric.
When I opened up my jelly roll there were a few scraps that I was not particularly fond of for Little Man. There was one with peace signs and another with giant pink flowers so I threw those out.

Materials:
1 Jelly Roll
24" Zipper in coordinating color
Matching Thread
Boppy cover or Boppy for pattern

 After I decided on which of the fabrics from the roll I was using I lined them up. The roll come in 2.5"x44" strips, with 3 of each fabric. I cut them in half so they were 22" long. Now I had 6 different fabrics with 6 strips each. I also had 2 pieces of the rainbow strip fabric so I threw them in as well.

 Step 1: Take 2 strips and place right sides together and sew down one long side using a 1/2" seam allowance.

 Repeat with the remaining strips placing right sides together, until all the strips are sewn in a long piece of fabric. I decided that I didn't want a pattern so I randomly grabbed strips just making sure no 2 were too close together. I ended up with a piece of fabric that was about 22"x 58"

Step 2: Wash and dry the fabric so that it is pre-shrunk and won't shrink after the finished project is washed. ***Warning, since these strips are all cut and fray, you will have TONS of strings everywhere. Cut as much as you can off, but its not that big of a deal.

All the yucky extra strings leftover from drying

 Step 3: Iron the fabric with all seams pressed to one side. It doesn't matter which side just makes it lay better to have them all going the same way.

 Step 4: fold your fabric in half and lay another cover on top to use as a pattern. you can also use the actual boppy just make sure to add a few inches when cutting it to account for the sides of the pillow.

 Cut around the cover leaving enough room for seam allowance.

Step 5: (Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this step) Remove the top layer and cut a line perpendicular to the strips. This is where you are going to sew in the zipper. I placed the zipper where i wanted it, where both ends of the zipper touched the edge of the cover.

 Place the zipper and bottom half of cover piece right sides together, pin and sew together. Next pin the top piece and zipper together and sew together as well.

Step 6: Pin both front and back pieces of boppy right sides together and sew around all sides. Since you have a zipper in it there is no need to leave room to turn in. Once everything is sewn together, open the zipper and turn the cover right side out. Place your pillow inside and TADA!!!

I love how it turned out and I know that no one else will have one like it.