Giving my Best Friend a makeover

Ah, mon cher ami.  Mi bicicleta.  When I was a wee tyke, my parents bought me a small banana seat Huffy.  It suited me until junior high school, when that ol' pink thing was just not cool.  So I purchased my first "big kid bike" with my very own hard-earned cash.  It was a 30 speed Huffy mountain bike.  Not top of the line.  Not intended to actually bike on a mountain.  But it got me around town during my pubescent pre-driver's license era.  And that's what mattered.

And then I became certified to operate an automobile, and the bike was parked in a dusty corner of the garage for many, many years.  It wasn't forgotten; there was still a level of maintenance handled (pun intended), but it was not ridden.  I had forgotten what an amazing instrument it was.

So after all that time, more than 15 years since its purchase, the bike was resurrected.  Cleaned up.  Pampered.  Adored.  My need for gasoline and car maintenance has dropped.  I have a deeper appreciation for still, calm, moderately warm mornings (because riding a bike to work in 35 mph straight line winds with a wind chill of 18 Fahrenheit isn't an experience to be ignored). 

This brings me to my newest project.  My cushioned seat cover fell apart from sunrot and age.  I've got tons of yarn, and moderate hook skillz, so rather than purchase a replacement, I set out to make my own.  

I perused the internets.  I found a very limited number of patterns and even fewer were free.  Not too many pictures of seat covers either.  Time to get creative.  

So I came up with this:

Nothing complicated.  Just a series of single crochets.  Chain 15 to 20 to start (hold it up to the back end of your seat and stretch the chain to find the right number for your size of seat).  Then go back and forth with a couple rows of sc.  Then do an increase row (I added an extra sc on each end of the row to give it a bit of bow).  Do another one or two rows of regular sc across.  Then begin to decrease stitches to the tip of the seat.  I had to keep holding up the work to my seat and comparing it.   As a rule of thumb, though, make your cover a bit smaller than the actual seat so that there isn't too much slack in it once you put it on.  

After the top was complete, I went around the outside edge of that piece with more rows of single crochets and threw in a few decreases here and there for good measure. This made the sides.  I used another piece of yarn and threaded it back and forth under the seat to attach the cover securely (it's not pretty, but no one will see it anyway... except you!)

I realize that there were better ways to accomplish this last step.  But this was pretty quick and required very little forethought.

Other notes: I used a rough, stiffer yarn (not stretchy or incredibly pliable).  It's that cheap Peaches n Creme cotton yarn you can find all over the place.  It took only half of a skein or so, so this was a very inexpensive project.  I also used a smaller hook (I chose an H since my yarn was nearly a sport weight, and because I wanted the stability of having more stitches per sq inch).

And TA-DA!