Friday, March 22, 2013

Crutch covers pattern + tutorial

In February my normally totally healthy and very active sister slipped on some ice and completely destroyed her ankle, broke like four bones and needed surgery and the works. I live out of town so there wasn't much I could do, until she sent me a link to some crutch covers she'd found online because I guess her crutches were really uncomfortable, and I thought "I could make those!" But I could not find a pattern anywhere easy online, everyone was like "What, just get some crutches and fit fabric around them." I had to measure some crutches that a coworker had, what a pain for something so standard! So here's what I ended up with, complete with measurements so you can make your own!

Here's the finished image sis grabbed for me, they fit! Yay!



I made three parts, shown below from left to right:
1) Handle covers that velcro around the grippy part
2) A bag that hangs off the grippy part, nicely sized for holding stuff like remotes or a water bottle, since when you're on crutches you CAN'T USE YOUR HANDS bummer!
3) Covers for the top part, big enough so if you wanted to add more padding or towels you can cover those too and everything will just look so pretty!



You will need:
1) 18" of sew-on velcro, unless you'd rather use snaps
2) Fleece. Either 5/8 yard of your favorite pattern ever, or 1/2 yard each of two of your favorite patterns if you have fabric selection trauma
3) 5/8 yard of webbing for the bag hangers

Pieces to cut:
1) Handle covers - 4.5x7.5" rectangles, each one uses two squares so you'll cut four total
2) Bag - 5" x 16", cut two, then cut two 4.5"x7" pieces for a front flap if you'd like
3) Top covers - 18"x12", cut four

Vague instructions:
I'm not going to go into a ton of detail here, I'll just say that I used 1/2" seam allowance for everything, and all velcro strips were 3".

The handle covers are basically sew one 3" velcro onto the right side of each bit of fleece, sew two pieces right sides together leaving an opening, turn inside out and topstitch.

The bag - fold each piece in half and sew the sides to make two bags. Turn one of them inside out. Stuff it in the the other one, right sides together. Make the flap, cut the webbing in half and sew the velcro onto the webbing so it'll wrap around the handles, put your two "bags" together right sides together, have the flap and webbing in there so it'll just all magically work out... you'll be fine.

The covers - The inside fleece gets 3" velcro bits. Again, you basically make each one into a little bag, turn one inside out, stuff it into the other one so their right sides are together, sew most of the top leaving an opening, turn them all and topstitch.

Hopefully those are good enough instructions, my goal here was mostly to provide the measurements I used so anyone whose sewn a decent amount can run from there and do your own thing. It's just big squares so you can't screw them up too much.

If anyone has suggestions for perfect types of padding, that might be nice info to add! I did not venture into that world because with the girl on crutches for only like six weeks, I needed to get these done in a weekend! This project took 2, maybe 3 hours tops and that's with my two-year-old tearing apart my sewing room like she does so yours might be faster.

Good luck and stay safe, people, nobody likes crutches! But if you have to be on them, at least this way they'll be cute!

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