Kids' Bean Bag With Pockets Tutorial

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Bean bags aren't cheap to buy, but they are easy to make.  If you have old curtains or sheets that need a new life, a bean bag is a worthwhile project to make use of them.  It's a pretty straight forward, though somewhat dull construction process.  There are lots of long, straight seams, and metres of material to manage, but it's not much effort to add details that break the making monotony.

Made from a curtain

Now I don't usually do things on a whim.  I'm what one would call "pretty boring".  Spontaneous isn't my style.  So I'm still scratching my head about how I managed to have a bag of polystyrene beans mere hours after deciding that Zaika was in need of a bean bag.

Even a hoarder like me didn't have the filling taking up some valueless underbed space. We had to pay for the beans.  With money.  Crap.  My extensive experience as a reluctant, nocturnal bean bag assessor in my student days told me that the super-static, ever spilling styro-beans were by far superior to any other forms of filling, such as foam, soft toys and styro-packaging.

Styro beans

There was no way my frugal brain would let me buy fabric in addition to the beans.  That would make the project more expensive than buying the beanbag itself.  No worries, I have piles of material.  I needed fabric that was large enough and strong enough for the project.  I turned to my Ugghhh box.  It's the stash of pretty unappealing fabrics that I  keep just in case they will come in handy for prototyping, etc.  The Ugghhh box is full of ugly fabric ducklings.  I figured that the bean bag was a good opportunity to use up some of my crap fabric.

It didn't take long to find what I was looking for: old curtains.  The textile was the epitome of boring.  Myth Busters proved that you can, indeed, polish a turd, so I decided to test my turd polishing skills with this skull numbingly dull fabric. Still, at least you can add to dull.  You can't take away from garish.  It's like ignorance vs stupidity: one is fixable.

Outer curtain fabric in some non-descript grey hue and a brown stretch canvas liner fabric

Project supplies:

• about 2.5m of strong, breathable liner fabric (like a bed sheet)
• about 2.5m of strong, breathable, easy to wash outer fabric (like an old curtain)
• 35-40l of filler beans
• strong thread
• 2 x 46cm locking zips (they can only be pulled open when the zip tab is lifted up).  Alternatively you can remove the tabs with pliers, permanently and use a paper clip to open the zip whenever you need to remove the cover for washing
• Velcro or domes for the zip flap
• paper, ruler and pencil for drawing the pattern

I found a free pattern here and chuckled at the 90's style instructional photography.  The tutorial is pretty passable, but I made a few adjustments that are worthy of note.

Firstly I added a couple of Grimly adorned side pockets.  Ok, they aren't terrifically useful, but they do take the attention away from the fabric.  In the case of this bean bag, less was never going to be more.  To make pockets, you need to attach them to the panels before joining the panels together.  For the pocket pattern, I cut/folded the panel pattern in half, which gave me perfectly matching seams.

Two panels with pockets sewn on before assembly of the panels.

A more important adjustment was creating a secure zip closure.  If you're making a bean bag for a little person, it's really not a good idea to let the styro beans spill everywhere.  It's essential to make sure that sneaky little hands can't get into the beans.  Locking zips (or tabless zips) help, but I opted for an additional security flap on the outer bag.  An integrated flap is the easiest option, as well as the most refined one.  However, I didn't get fed the idea until the zip was already sewn in, so I attached a separately sewn flap.

1. Cut a strip of fabric 10cm wide x 46 cm long.  Fold in half lenghtwise and press flat.  Sew over one of the zip seams with the raw edges facing the zip.

2.  Fold the flap over the zip and press

 

3. Top stitch over the fold.  The stitching should be overlapping or be close to the zip seam.

 4. Sew on Velcro or add domes to the flap.

This was the reason for making the bag

The bag was milk-stained within a week

The pocket is superficially useful after all

Additional construction and design notes:

• Don't skip the top stitching on any of the seams.  The seams will be much weaker without it.
• Press all the seams for the same reason.  This was boring even for me.
• You will have to occasionally remove the cover for washing.   I would imagine that attempts at getting the bean-filled liner back inside the cover will make you swear profusely.  If I were to make a bean bag of this style again, I would either include a longer zip in one of the side seams or sew the zip around the bottom circle panel and make that panel zip off completely.

 

Baby Tops

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Here are a few cotton and merino tops I made a while back.  Orlik, Rubik and Snoork make an appearance, courtecy of my mother in law's embroidery machine.

New Bibs for Craft2.0!

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A piggy for your piggy.  Or an owl and bat for your....?

Charcoal satin cotton bibs: Orlik the Owl, Blik the Bat, Pixie the Pig

A baby cannot have too many bibs, and I've been utilising all my cotton scraps to make piles of them for my drool monkey.  Other parents have been encouraging me to make bibs to sell, and now I do!  The bibs will make their absorbent debut at Craft2.0 on Saturday before they go on sale in the Chromatophobic online stores.

Pixie the Pig bib

The hand-printed bibs are 100% cotton, upcycled from unwanted towels and clothing.  They feature dome closures, not because I'm obsessed with doming, but because I cannot stand the evil, evil fibre destroying velcro, and because I find tying ribbons to be a pain in the posterior.

White cotton bibs

The bibs are screen printed with Grimly characters: the recent Orlik the Owl and the newly incarnated Pixie the Pig and Blik the Bat, both of whom materialised from the monsters series.  This already unleashed trio will be properly introduced in the near future.

Only two sleeps till Craft2.0!

New Scary Faces

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Oodles of doodles = much fun and excitement

I had a project in mind and needed to draw a couple of crazed, grimacing lunatic characters to eventually infiltrate the Grimly family.  

The Grimly family to date: Mooks, Psychotic Santa, Orlik, Zik, Styx, Roobik, Erik, Snoork, Waffle

Of course, once got hold of a pen, I couldn't stop at a couple of deranged faces, and an hour or so later I had a stack of oddballs that only a mother could love.  Fortunately I am a mother.

 

After scanning and some digital tweaking, I ended up with a little army of demented mosters ready to invade unsuspecting projects.

A lot of Whacky

Orlik Gets Plastic Surgery

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Serious and sophisticated is not my doodling style.

Original Orlik: pendant

Orlik the brooch

Orlik on a sleep sack

Orlik on a onesie

The imperious Orlik was born outside of the Grimly family and was a little too grown up to fit in with its dysfunctional members.  I decided that a pull here and a tuck there, a tweak in between and a lobotomy should form the carnivorous fowl into something suitably lunatic in appearance.

Behold the surgical progression...

Orlik the Owl Onesie

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Fabric stamping using laser cut shapes.

Over the years of making of stuff using the wizz-bangery black magic of the laser cutter, I've accumulated a bunch of various cut out little shapes that started their life as prototypes.

All of my designs undergo prototyping iterations that are threatening to take over my house

This stainless steel and bamboo brooch was first prototyped in various materials like acrylic, card and styrene

Recently I had a thought.  At first I wasn't sure what that was.  My head went all funny, and steam came out of my ears.  I assumed that I was about to kick the bucket, but then realised that my grey cells were getting all excited over something creative.  I imagined using these little shapes as stamps, and the limitless textile ornamentation options that would yield, and my brain went all woozy with excitement.

I grabbed a onesie, a clear acrylic Orlik the Owl, a little pot of black fabric paint and tweezers.  I poured a little bit of paint into the lid of the pot and holding the plastic fowl with the tweezers I dipped it into the paint.  I was so impatient to see the end result, that I didn't even bother attaching a handle to the stamp.  Next time I'll use some double-sided tape and a bottle cork or a soda bottle lid to make a handle.

I carefully removed the stamp from the paint and positioned it on the fabric.  The paint bled a bit in places, and the stamp coverage wasn't even.  I called this a "sample" to convince myself that the imperfections were trivial.  *Ahem*.

I stamped another onesie with an acrylic snowflake, and the [low] quality was similar to the owl stamping.  The obvious verdict, which I was pretty certain of from the start, is that acrylic is an inappropriate choice of material for stamping because it's too smooth, and the paint runs straight off.  More suitable materials that are easily laser cut are cork, plywood and MDF (after a bit of scuffing).  I'll post some experiments with those another time.

Go The Fuck to Sleep, Says the Owl

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The book is pretty funny, but I don't think I'd read that to my monkey.

The first night the baby migrated from the bassinette into a cot, we awoke at 230am to flashing red lights and what sounded like a whole freakin orchestra of toys exacting their revenge for getting weed on.  The baby was still swaddled, but only waist down.  She was propping herself up on her arms, looking more awake than a speeding raver, and pushing keys on her musical piano that I'd stupidly forgotten to untie from the cot.  After frantically undoing the knotted ties, destroying the wretched piano (I wish, but I actually put it beside the bed very gently), reswaddling the baby and assuring myself that my other half was asleep and not dead from a heart attack, I decided that it was time to finally sew a swaddle sack that was as secure as a straitjacket for the criminally insane.

That should hold baby securely swaddled (Google images)

Just so happened that I was given a domer for Christmas, and I desperately wanted to dome everything in sight.  No more annoying velcro, here come the domes.

Go on, put your finger in here

Well, I made a swaddle sack.  It has dome closures.  It's designed to dome to a wrap around the mattress to keep the baby from rolling.  It has a cool looking owl on the front (I named the owl Orlik to welcome him into the Grimly family).  It's 100% cotton.  It's sleep-friendly black.  Frankly, I think it's a damn good looking swaddle sack.  I'd sleep in one myself.

Orlik the Owl swaddle sack

There is one little flaw.

It is fucking useless at swaddling. 

Arggfffffugkkkk.

Even though I made it snuggly, it won't keep the baby arms in place.  They sneakily wiggle out and flail about the place like it's some sort of a raging party.  It's not a damn party, it's time to sleep!  I should have made a straitjacket instead.  The trouble with domes is that they are pretty much permanent.  Velcro, you win.

Well, what a nicely swaddled baby

Hey, get that hand back in there!

FYI owls are nocturnal.  Not the best choice of animal to stick on a sleep sack.  May as well draw a bat.  Hm, now there's and idea.