Has bean bag, will blog.

Well, it's not the cushions I promised, neither is it the 'other thing' I mentioned in the last-but-one blog, but it is a bean bag.

Here's how:
Buy a whole loads of those minuscule white balls to put in bean bags.
Buy some end-of-line fabric (£2.99 a metre!).
Have a look at a bunch of bean bags and wonder which design is easiest.
Conclude it's the one with the least sewing.


(These are not precise measurements...)
Cut out two trapeziums (Base 90cm, one vertical side (i.e., the sides are at right-angles to the base) 65cm, the other 35 cm. This leaves about a 95cm diagonal at the top.)
The easiest way to do this is cut a rectangle 90cm by 100cm, then cut a diagonal line across it (make sure you cut it the right way) It would be much easier if I drew it, but I can't be bothered. These sides need to be sewn together back and front (not top and bottom!), so that the front is 35cm high, the back 65cm. (Obviously, you'll need to have the outside bits of the fabric (if applicable) facing each other. You'll notice from the photo how beautifully the fabric matches up at the seam.

Use your high school maths knowledge to work out the diameter of the circle needed for the top of your bean bag. (It's circumference divided by pi [pi is 3.14ish]) So if you've got a circumference of about 186 (which you would have if you double 95 and allow for a bit of seam) then you'd have a diameter of 60cm. Measure this out on the fabric (If you're like me, you'll spend ages cursing the fact that you bought a repeating fabric that's got the wrong distance between repeats and is thus a nightmare to figure out).
Pin the circle to the sides. I took three attempts at this, because I hadn't measured quite right, so I kept ending up with a big fold at the end of my pinning line. (Make sure you've pinned it the right way)
Sew the circle to the sides.

Wonder how you're going to do the bottom, which needs a zip.
Decide to do it by sewing a whole bunch of bits together and then chopping them into a circle (make sure it's the right size - it's pi time again!)
Spend about 40 minutes trying to figure out how to sew a zip in.
Figure out a way of doing it that probably isn't right, but seems to have worked anyhow. (I sewed two bits together, then sewed the zip onto the two bits, then unpicked the original seam so that the zip actually worked.)

(At this point my machine broke. I don't know what went wrong, but the thread kept gathering underneath and the machine made unhappy noises (it is 73 years old...). After reading the (73 year old and thus slightly dog-eared) manual and fiddling with the machine for about 20 minutes, I managed to stop it being broken. I wouldn't say I fixed it, as such ... but it lasted the rest of the job, and hopefully will live to sew another day.)

Sew the bottom to the rest (keep it all inside it)
I'd suggest undoing the zip before you sew the bottom to the sides. I didn't and then had to work out how to undo the zip, which was on the inside!

Admire your work.

Get loads of bean-bag filling and stick it in (I used a lining which I'd stolen from another bean-bag).

Wish you'd taken some 'during' photos.

Restock all the bean bags in the house with the leftover bean-bag filling.

Sit on your creation for a while and enjoy the extreme satisfaction.



Take some 'completed project' photos.

Blog it.