Rain Cover For Your Bike Seat

Many New Yorkers do not have the luxury of indoor bike storage so along with thieves you have to worry about the weather ruining your bike. An easy solve for the rain is a plastic bike seat cover made from a plastic bag. Most people just tie a bag over their seats, I find two problems with this it's ugly and then bulky to shove in your bag when not in use. I also realized I have a few plastic bags that I hate to part with because they hold sweet memories of my trips to Japan, Sweden or other lovely place. With all this is mind I created a bike seat cover out of one of my beloved bags. It super easy to make but you'll need a sewing machine and some intermediate sewing skills.
You'll need:
*Plastic bag bigger than your bike seat when laying flat.
*Tracing paper
*Scrap of paper 8.5 x 11 or A4 or bigger.
*pencil
*scissors
*sewing machine
*thread
*1/4" elastic about a yard, you'll have left over.

1. Take your regular scrap of paper and go over to your bike and trace the seat.
2. Take your tracing and make a clean trace on tracing paper and add 1.5"-1.75" from the edge of your bike seat line, this will be the edge that will go over the sides of the seat.
3. Cut your tracing.
4. Take your pretty plastic bag, I used my Loft bag, and figure out the placement of the graphic on your bag how it will look on the seat. Then place the tracing on top and either trace with permanent magic marker or place a couple of weights on it and cut tracing. Use weights instead of pins because it will leave holes.
5. Measure the circumference of the edge of your tracing and cut a piece of elastic 1.5" shorter than measurement.
6. Now comes the tricky part because you can't pin the elastic to the plastic. Using a zig-zag stitch, take your cut plastic bag and you are going to sew the elastic to the very edge of the plastic all around. You most stretch the elastic the entire time you sew it while it's passing through the feeds, but try and not pull the sewn bits from the back. This will create a shower cap effect around the edge.
Voila you have a bike seat cover!