How to Make an RV Bra Cover

An RV bra is a protective cover for the front of your RV, camper, motorhome or trailer. The cover functions as a rock guard and prevents other road debris from scratching or denting the surface of your RV.

This tutorial can be applied to any size and shape of motorhome or trailer. Dura-Skrim® Patterning Material is a lightweight plastic sheeting that makes it easy to get the correct size, shape and layout for your RV bra. The patterning material conforms easily around the curves and corners at the front of your recreational vehicle. You can pull it tightly to pattern a tight fit without the Dura-Skrim tearing or stretching out of shape. Because the material is clear, it’s easy to see where you need to mark your pattern to cut around objects.

Softouch® is a great choice for this type of cover. The outside surface of the material is an acrylic-coated polyester, so it is durable enough to stand up to abrasion from rocks and road debris without tearing. The soft, non-abrasive backing is similar to felt and provides protection for the surface underneath. Softouch is highly UV resistant so it won’t fade with lengthy exposure to the elements. Sailrite® also carries several other fabrics that would work well for this kind of cover application. Our Outdoor Fabric Selection Guide compares all of these options on the basis of abrasion resistance, water resistance, UV resistance and more to help you make the best choice for your RV.

To get the most out of our materials and to simplify our sewing, we designed our RV bra without any sharp corners. Gradual curves on all the corners allow the binding to run continuously around the edge of the cover without having to stop sewing, turn the corner and run the binding in a new direction. Since we’re using binding, there’s also no need to create any hems. We chose Top Notch® 9 polyester binding, but an acrylic binding would work just as well. A Sailrite® Swing-Away Binder keeps the binding evenly folded while sewing, especially around the curves of the cover.

Snaps make installing and removing the bra cover quick and easy. It’s important to prepare both your surface and fabric for the snaps. We highly recommend cleaning the surface of your RV with an alcohol prep pad and applying a 3M™ primer before attaching the SNAD®. This will ensure a strong bond between the surface of your RV and the adhesive on the back of the SNAD. We also reinforced the snap locations on our cover with scraps of Softouch. Our snaps were installed through three layers of fabric instead of one. This extra thickness forms a more secure attachment between the snap and the fabric and prevents the snap from stretching or pulling through the material.

Watch our video tutorial to make your own custom RV bra cover. If you want to view more projects in our RV Renovation Series, click here!