101 One-Yard Wonders: Project #1

This is the book I got for Christmas! Yesterday I made the "Beanbag Booster Seat". It was super easy and a great idea for my 2.5 & 4.5 year-olds!!

To make one seat, you'll need...

- one yard of a wipe-off-able fabric like oilcloth. Hobby Lobby has this, but in two prints. If I was going to do this again, I'd order some cooler printed oilcloth online. I also got 2 yards of oilcloth since I was making two seats and this left me with quite a bit of leftover, so 1 1/2 is probably okay for two seats.

- coordinating thread

- one 12" x 12" x 2" foam insert. Hobby Lobby had these also.

- 3 pounds of buckwheat hulls...this was very difficult to find. I called all the craft stores in the area, as well as the natural food stores and couldn't find buckwheat hulls! I was talking with a friend and decided that beanbag filling would be the next best and Meijer sells a 100 liter bag for around $11! I only used about 1/3 of the bag, but it did work very well for the seats.

The seat covers were very easy to sew, folding them in half diagonally (right sides together) and measuring 5.5" from the corner and sewing a vertical line at each of the four corners. The oilcloth has a coated cotton underside that makes it hard to feed through the sewing machine, so I had to make sure to pull it through as I was sewing. Once the "basket" shape is made, with it still inside out, pin piece B on three sides, leaving one side open. Stitch piece B onto piece A.

Stuff the cover with the foam insert and then fill with the beanbag filler. I used a tall kitchen cup to pour the filler in and I didn't count, but I probably used at least 10 cup fulls of filler before I was satisfied. I used a few pins to secure the open end and would use one of my kids as a tester. Once I was done filling, I whip-stitched the open end shut and I was done!!

The book recommends that the children using the seats be aged 3-6 since the seats are not secured to the chair and they don't strap the children in. However, they are perfect for my kiddos because the traditional seats with straps don't strap comfortably around N and B thinks I'm treating him like a baby if I ask him to sit in one of them. The seats aren't connected to the chair in any way, so they are easy to move when the kiddos are not using them.

I will for sure be making more of these to keep at my mother-in-law's house. We have dinner with the whole family on Sunday nights and we are up to five grand kids with one more on the way and getting all of them a seat/high chair has been tricky....now my two can use these, freeing up two strappy seats for the little boys, freeing up the high chair for the baby! Perfect!!

I can't wait to try another project from "One Yard Wonders"! What will I make next?!