There’s an 8’ beanbag chair on Amazon that made it’s rounds on Reddit (technically it’s a foam-chip bag). I showed it and its $300 price tag to Mrs. Devil who snorfelled, “huh, I could probably make something like that in half a day.”
She’s great with a sewing machine and I’ve learned not to doubt her skills—but that’s clothes and assorted costumes. Before we make a trip to the fabric store, are beanbag and similar chairs tricky? Or are they really just a series of panels sewn together?
(Again, she knows that dresses are much more than panels quickly sewn together—I don’t want to oversimplify sewing with my question.)
My roomie rebuilt a beanbag for me way back when (I don’t sew at all).
It really is just sewing a bunch of panels together, plus a zipper.
I think the biggest problem is that everything - fabric, thread, zipper - has to be heavy-duty. If the seams split, you will have an unholy mess on your hands.
If she doesn’t have a machine that can handle that, things can get ugly.
The other tricky part is getting all those tiny little styrofoam balls in there. They cling to everything.
Never in the history of beanbag chairs has anyone ever lowered themselves into one, so yeah, the stitching and materials have to be explosion-proof… kinda like what holds together a parachute or a teenage boy’s zipper as he goes through puberty.
Thank Red. Any idiot can put basic search terms into Google; I came here for something more than a troll response–things like Doper anecdotes (hence the forum choice), the need to work with heavy duty materials and the need to be prepared for electrostatic hell. Also curious if moving away from the basic ball shape implies particular difficulties.
WARNING - the outer part of the beanbag is indeed easy to make, but the stupid “beans” you have to put inside of it get everywhere. The static builds up in them and they stick to your hands, to the floor, everything.
I wouldn’t think there’d be any exceptional problems with a different shape, other than making double-extra-super sure that any strain points would hold.
Mine was just the basic spheroid. IIRC, it was eight ovalish panels and two circles. The zip was in one of the circles.
place the filling, especially if the small beans, in small plastic bags (kitchen garbage bag) only half full and with the air squished out and the neck tied in knots). make up dozens of these and place in a cover.
Be sure to price out the materials (including the beans) before deciding if this is a good idea. Just looking at that description, you’re probably looking at about 5m of fabric (16 feet or so), just off the top of my head $20 a metre is not unreasonable for heavy duty fabric … you’re going to edge pretty close to the $300 mark even before you start sewing, I suspect.
I like sewing, but I find these days it’s hardly ever worthwhile from a cost point of view to make a simple item you can find in the shops. These days I really only sew if I can’t find exactly what I want to buy.
My mum made one (standard size) for my kid and made it with a calico inner so we could take off and wash the cover. We were given the outer material, which saved heaps of money, but even the inner and beads (2 packs, from memory) pushed the price up.
She filled the inner with all the beads while in their walk-in shower unit, reducing the problem of the beads going everywhere.
Then my kid left a lunch box on it, all summer holidays, with rotten fruit in it, which dribbled out. We took the bean bag to the dump. Perhaps a waterproof lining if you’re going to be eating/drinking on it?