Don't you love when you can check something off of your very long to do list??! I mean, my list is so long it's hard to find where the beginning is!
Ever since I saw this cute stuffed animal chair (and pinned it of course!) I couldn't wait to try it out. Such a cute concept. Every mother knows the dilemma of having way too many stuffed animals in the house. And the more kids you have the more they multiply...at alarming rates!
I have a hard time with just giving them away. Cause I know how much they cost and often I'm the one that shelled out the money at some point for all of these. Not all but a lot of them.
And some of them have sweet memories...first Build A Bear, first Disney stuffed animal, blah blah blah.
So what a neat idea - use them to fill a "bean bag" chair!
And yesterday I finally sat down to make one and I thought I'd share my results with a few tips that I learned along the way in case anyone else wants to make one.
I printed the pattern from here (pin here). The only way to get the pattern to print at the correct size is to print in Landscape. Then I followed the directions from here. You need a little bit of knowledge of how to do zippers as her photos don't show every single step but it was pretty easy. I used a 24" zipper (instructions call for a 25" zipper) and it worked just fine.
When sewing on the zipper don't sew to the end on either end. You'll need the outside and inside liner to be separate when you're sewing it to the bottom pieces. I found that out the hard way when I was sewing the pieces together & had to pull out the seams a bit on the ends. I detest seam ripping...a necessary evil in sewing at times. It still wasn't perfect but it worked.
I didn't add the hexagon on the top. I liked the look of the points coming together and didn't mind if they weren't perfect. I did notice that once the bag is filled it puts a lot of pressure on that point so be sure to add a few extra stitches across the top (thankfully I did). I also noticed that if you don't fill your bag quite as full it won't pull as much at the top (also makes the bag a little more squishy).
When closing things up I didn't hand stitch but rather just stitched really close to the edge. You can't even tell. I don't hand stitch unless completely necessary or on something that's really important (like my daughter's First Communion dress). I have joint pain (thank you Crohn's) so I avoid it at all costs.
Fabrics used L-R: yellow-Hobby Lobby, Cruzin' (Henry Glass), Ta Dot in pink, Zig Zag Strip in Bright, grey for lining-Hobby Lobby
Instead of batting I used fusible fleece...because that's what I had on hand that I use for all of my bags and I didn't want to fool with sewing the batting on.
Because all of the pieces (except the bottom) are cut on the fold you can save fabric by folding the selvage pieces to the center and then you have 2 folds to cut on. Learned that tip from sewing class years back :) I did that for the lining since I used all the same fabric for that.
I managed to fit 37 stuffed animals in it (big and small). See photo above...those were all inside! And you can see I put a bunch of good sized stuffed animals in there. I ended up taking out 3 or 4 of the bigger ones to make it a bit less full and relieve a little stress on that top but it still holds a ton!
My little one has snagged the chair for her own...she absolutely loves it and freaks out if anyone has the nerve to sit in it! My son wants me to make a smaller one for his room so I'll be on the hunt for some more "boyish" fabrics for him. I'm thinking plaids & stripes.
I think the question everyone asks "is it lumpy" and quite honestly that was my only "concern" with this project (although I didn't really care cause in the end I liked the idea more than worrying about it being lumpy). And the answer is...kind of. But we all sat on it and it's surprisingly comfortable and you don't really even notice the lumps.
I'm thinking of making a smaller one for extra throw blankets. We always seem to have a ton of those (for sitting outside on summer nights, baseball games, soccer games, etc) but when we're not using them they just take up valuable storage space in closets.
Tomorrow I'll share how I refinished that buffet (shown in the photo above) into our new entertainment center :)