8 Beauty Up those Crutches

 {please pardon my appearance - this is 1 day post surgery.  Do notice my hair (well sort of - not the top, but the bottom) - I used the sock bun process and even though I did it quickly and with basically dry hair, it held so I can't wait to try it again! And why the crooked pics?  Because my 13 year old sister takes all her pics that way!  LOL - thanks Chris!}

The night before my recent knee surgery I pulled out my old crutches that were in my parents garage.  Turned out one of the pads had crumbled.  Mind you these really weren't THAT old.  I had another pair of wooden ones so I took the pad off from one of those and put it on the crutch.  It fit fine and it would have been fine as it was, but to be honest, I was sort of embarrassed by my ghetto crutches!

I decided it would probably be pretty easy to make a quick cover.  I brought the crutches downstairs, grabbed some scrap fabric and got to work.  The first cover I made involved two pieces of fabric that I cut into a square, marked up so that I sewed it into a hexagon, cut off the access corners, flipped inside out, sewed the sides shut and put onto the crutch.  It worked perfectly and I liked it... until I went to do it again and realized I didn't have enough fabric.  DARN.  Pawing through my fabric stash I came across a belt I had made for a sundress that was a total FAIL.  Eyeing the belt I realized it would be SUPER easy to turn it into the crutch pad cover!  And now I'll share what to do with you!
For my standard adult crutch I needed the following:
15" High x 25" Wide piece of fabric

Fold it in half and sew down the long edgeTurn your tube right side out

Center your seam in the middle and iron your tube flat.

Lay your crutch down and figure out where you want to make your cuts.  You don't want your narrow part to go in anymore than the edge of the top of the crutch pad or it won't fit over the pad.  I used a ruler and lined it up just outside of the widest part of the crutch and made a mark with a magic marker.  Do this on both sides of the crutch. Using pinking shears cut from that mark up to the corner of your fabric.  (I then used this as a template for my second crutch pad cover and cut that out as well).

Fold your fabric in half, matching your cut to your other mark and cut the other side.

Sew up each of the sides and flip right side out.

Cut some velcro and sew it on either side of the inside of the pad cover.

Put it onto your pad and VOILA, bye-bye ghetto crutches!  You have stylin' crutches and no one will be the wiser that you have one brown and one gray pad!  COUPLE OF NOTES: Adding batting in between the two layers would be a great way to add some extra padding and comfort.  Again, this was a last minute project for me so I didn't bother - plus this time around I'm only on crutches for three days.  Maybe my next surgery where I'll be on them for 8 weeks I'll do so.  I'll let you know how that goes!  And I considered making covers for the hand rest portion of the crutch but decided against it since it was 9:30pm the night before my surgery.  But if you want everything to match I know it would be very simple to create a tube to wrap around the handle and either sew it shut and take the handle off and put on the handle OR add a piece of velcro to secure it.  Lastly, I used flashy fabric for the first attempt, but alas I didn't have enough to make a second, so went with the blending in gray damask instead.