Grow Me. Grow You.

Bean Bags.














I made these for Marshal and Apollo for Christmas. They are so fun to play with and cute to look at. I stitched everything by hand except for sewing the actual bean bags together. My secret to getting anything done with 2 babies? I kept the felt in a big zip lock with all my thread, needles, patterns, and scissors. We travel a lot or go out. When I had a second in the car, I could work on a few stitches here or there. It was just as easy to take it in the house and work when I had a few minutes too. Here's how:

Materials Needed
* Felt
* Thread
* Silicon beads (at craft stores). Rice or beans would work.
* Pins (to hold pieces together)


Directions
1. Find some cute pictures you like off the internet, in kids' books, or draw them yourself.

Here's what I used:
For the fish and birds, I traced them out of one of Apollo's books, cut out the paper, and used it to cut out my felt.







For the tree, I saw an image I liked on google, and drew it myself.


For the elephant and owl, use these templates here and here (it's off Martha Stewart's website). She has a website here where she sells her collages for $140.00 each. I printed them off, cut out each piece, and used them to cut out the felt. You are welcome to use the same colors for each piece as I did if you like how they turned out.





2. I made my bean bags a little bigger than normal. I cut the felt in half (it will look like two rectangles) and cut off the longer parts of the rectangles to make them square.



3. Stitch the images onto one side of the bean bags using the felt and thread colors you like.




4. Sew around the bean bag with a sewing machine. I didn't even turn them inside out. I thought the stitching looked cute (thanks for the idea, January).





Leave a little hole to fill the bag with stuffing.




Fill the bag with the stuffing you like and finish of the stitching. I used the silicon beads from Michaels.





5. I googled bean bag games and came up with a big list. I copied it off and put it in the boys' presents. I stacked the bean bags up and tied some yarn around them.




We played with them as a family the other night. We tried to get all our bean bags in a basket. Apollo had to stay behind the line and we made it fairly easy for him. Carleton and I were goofing off and would make it really hard for each other and put the basket in random places. We put the basket almost right under Annie and even she would throw the bean bags.