Six years ago, I took three store bought winch covers and sewed them up into
this much larger
for my other half. It still stands as the oddest thing I've sewn to date.
At the time, he had been hounding me for over a year to make one from
scratch, which I had zero interest in doing. When we came upon these
small ones on sale for 75% off, they seemed like the perfect springboard
from which to create a custom cover.
It ended up costing about $10 to make, plus we had the foresight to go out
and buy a second set of three covers for the inevitable "replacement cover"
down the road.
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Original cover and its new replacement...
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Fast forward six years down the road and this comparison picture shows how
well used the cover has been. Sun damage and tiny rips and tears meant that
it was time for winch cover version 2.0.
I asked hubby what could be improved from the original design before
remaking it. Apparently it was hard to fasten underneath because the straps
were rather short.
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Two covers joined for the top part; an additional strip planned for
the bottom part...
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Given that I had material left over from the third cover, I decided to add a
2.5" wide strip to the bottom piece. That would alleviate the "straps not
long enough" problem without having to lengthen the straps, which I had no
way of doing without buying additional webbing.
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The two extra straps sewn in...
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Nothing like having your own blog to refer to, by the way. When I
showed the original post to the other half, he said something to the
effect of, "you sure went into detail".
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Bottom panel expanded...
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Of course I went into detail; I knew I'd have to do this again.
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The 600 denier polyester that these covers are made out of is easy to cut
and sew and there are no worries about edges fraying.
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Clipped and ready to sew together...
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As a material, it's considered heavy duty and very durable. (In actual fact,
while the old cover looks a little worse for wear, it's still usable; the small holes could have been patched.)
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Last step is to secure the other ends of the straps to the bottom
edge...
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Now that I know how the pieces go together, it actually wouldn't be difficult to make this winch cover from scratch. I have seen, however, that this poly material — if one were to buy it as yardage — is sold at widely ranging prices.
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Done in almost no time!
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It did occur to me that a BBQ cover could also yield sufficient material to be repurposed into a winch cover if necessary. At least that way, I could do the touch and feel test and know what I'm getting.
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| Reverse view... |
That said, this may be an example of a project where using pre-existing similar items to create a modified version is more economical than starting from scratch, given the price of the original three winch covers. Just buying webbing and fasteners would likely have cost more than ten dollars.
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You know the best part? It's a refreshing change of pace to sew something that doesn't
require me to think too much. All I had to do was look back to my original blog post
to see how to proceed and then make the small change to improve it.
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| Back on the front of the truck... |
More than the simplicity of the project, it's the kind of thing that you really don't care
how it's sewn together, just that it is. It went relatively fast because I was able
to go to the sewing machine and just zip through the seams without thinking about
should this piece overlap that or should that piece overlap this?
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| Reverse view... |
Because it didn't matter. It was just, join them together.
Now we're going to have to keep an eye out for these on the shelves of Princess Auto again... in case we need version 3.0!
Have you ever taken something that's already pre-made and augmented it to fit your specific needs?
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