Sewing Project: A Helmet Cover with Ear Flaps (Shallow Thoughts)

Sewing Project: A Helmet Cover with Ear Flaps

With the weather getting cold, I need a way to keep my ears warm while biking.

Many years ago, I had some fleece earwarmers that velcroed around a helmet strap. I bought them in a bike store and they worked wonderfully, but I've been unable to find anything quite like them online. I've knitted triangular cozies to go over a helmet strap, but they don't stay up, so they sag and don't cover my ears.

I tried making something like that, but they didn't come out well, mostly because velcro is such a pain to try to sew: the backing is super thick and I'd never expect my sewing machine to get through it without breaking needles. Hand-sewing it isn't much better, requiring a crazy amount of force to push the needle through the backing for each stitch. And then once it's finally stitched, it's too rigid. It seems strange that no one sells thin sewable velcro -- it would be fine if it wasn't quite as strong as the industrial-strength type — but I've never seen any. I may try cutting velcro into thin strips and using fabric glue.

Meanwhile, I have lots of crochet earmuffs — they're fun and easy to crank out — but they don't work that well with helmet straps, and sometimes interaction with the strap will make the earmuff fall off in mid-ride, which I typically won't notice until I get home and take off the helmet (because by the time it happens, I've warmed up and don't really need the earmuffs any more, but they're comfortable enough that I forget I'm wearing them so I don't stop to take them off).

A few years ago, I tried knitting some triangular pieces (really cones) that fit perfectly over my helmet straps. That didn't work because the tops of the triangles don't stay up: they sag to where they're only covering the bottoms of my ears. I tried various ways of getting them to stay up, eventually attaching pieces of wire to my helmet where I could hook the ear-warmers; that sort of worked but it was a pain to attach and detach them, plus who wants to have sharp pieces of wire sticking out of a helmet?

So after my velcro failure, I was contemplating other ways to keep earwarmers from sagging, and found myself thinking about a strap over the helmet that would go from the top of one earwarmer to the top of the other one. That sounded promising ... but as long as I'm making something that goes over the top of the helmet, why not make an actual helmet cover? That might also help block the chilly wind from hitting my head (though in practice my hair keeps my head pretty warm on its own).

Anyway, the monthly Sewing Meetup was coming up in a few days,and a helmet cover sounded like a perfect project.

Making a Helmet Cover

I started by making "patterns" in newspaper for a piece over the center of the helmet and two side pieces. I tried to make it way too big, since it's easy to cut off extra fabric but less easy to add it.

I'm still pretty much a novice sewer, but one thing I've learned: when working on a new experimental project, I use "basting" for everything, meaning I use a simple linear stitch set to the biggest size my machine will allow. That way, if it turns out to be in the wrong place, it's easy to pull put and sew differently. Once I get the sizes right, I can sew it up with a real stitch and pull out the basting (or not).

I cut the top piece and two side pieces to match the pattern I'd made. basted them together, and tried test-fitting them on the helmet. It looked like this was going to work! So I hemmed (still using a basting stitch) the bottom, making the hem wide enough that I'd be able to thread elastic around the bottom.

In the back, I'd cut the side pieces too short to wrap around the back (even though I'd made the pattern very long there, at some point when cutting cloth, I made them too short, something that seems to happen to me a lot in sewing projects) so I had to cut another piece and sew that in.

Once I had a basic cover more or less fitting on the helmet, it was time to work on the straps. I found it a little tricky to make the pattern for the straps, because it was hard to hold the helmet, the straps, the paper and a pen all at the same time. But fortunately it only needed to be approximate.

I cut it with a generous seam allowance, then cut two pieces of fleece to match. Then I sewed up the fleece earpiece triangles. That turned out to be a little tricky too: this was my first experience sewing fleece, and it turns out to be one of the materials my machine likes to suck into its innards. Fortunately, for an earlier project I'd bought some water soluble stabilizer: pieces of paper that you can cut to size and then put under your fabric between the fabric and the fabric-eating parts of the sewing machine. The paper keeps the fabric from getting sucked under, with the down side that it ends up getting sewed into your project. But that's where the water soluble part comes in: once you put your project through the wash, the stabilizer all dissolves away like magic.

The earpieces are the only part where I didn't use basting. I was confident they fit over the straps, and I didn't want to have to use the stabilizer twice, so I sewed a real seam.

I slid the earpieces over the helmet straps, test-fitted it on my head and pinned the earpieces in place. Then I took it off and basted them to the helmet cover.

Finally, I threaded some elastic through the bottom hem with an embroidery needle, then slid it onto the helmet and tied the elastic tight enough to hold the cover in place. The covered helmet was now ready to wear!

I rode to the store and library on a cold day (around freezing) and the helmet cover worked great! My ears were quite comfortable for the whole ride.

It didn't look as good as I'd envisioned. Maybe a simpler color scheme would have looked better than this snazzy southwest scheme. But my basic helmet is a pretty boring grey and pink (it was what fit me well in the store when I decided it was time for a new helmet), so maybe this is an improvement. I'm not sure.

The important thing is, it fits well, keeps my ears comfy, and is easy to put on and take off without needing sharp pieces of wire sticking out. Ease of installation/deinstallation is important, since sunny afternoon rides don't typically need ear-warming, while cold morning and late afternoon rides definitely do.

So now I can take the cover off and replace all those basting stitches with real ones, fix up the corners and other unfinished parts, and ride through the winter in comfort.