A new use for beans

The title of this post implies that a) I already have many uses for beans and b) I had some spare ones lying around the house collecting dust. Neither of those things are true. We do love us some beans & wieners here on occasion, but I'm talking about the dried kind of beans. The ones you put in beanbags.

Randomly the other day I was reading about how to create your own beanbag chair and thought that I hadn't seen any actual beanbags lately. I have fond memories of them from childhood - it seemed that beanbags were involved in many of the games played at school and I thought we could use a few around here...

They were a really fun project - easy and a great use of fabric scraps (boy, do we have a lot of fabric scraps!). And if you did have copious amounts of dried beans to get rid of this would be a great way to use them up. We didn't have any, so I bought a $3 bag of small white beans. Very descriptive. For 900 grams they are a much better deal than the polystyrene beanbag filler available at craft stores, and my theory is that if Cole manages to gnaw a hole in the bag I'd prefer he ate actual dried beans rather than plastic or whatever...

Although to greatly reduce the chance of that happening at all these are triple sewn. They're lined with plain, sturdy white cotton (which has double-sewn seams) and then that little bag is enclosed in a little case of heavier weight fabric. A little beanbag pillow case, sort of! The little beans will have to break free of three separate barriers if they want to escape, and I'm just not sure they're that smart... Check out step-by-step photos & instructions of this project over at Flickr, if you're interested in making your own. So easy.

One thing I've found lately is that I really enjoy hand sewing. In the past, I would do anything to avoid hand sewing, but I've discovered that it's such a methodical, slow process that it's actually very relaxing. Spending a lot of time at night now watching old British mystery shows and slowly hand-stitching things.

Anyway, Cole loves his beanbags! He likes to crawl around with them hanging from his mouth and patting them. I made him two sets. The first was out of an upholstery-weight ikea fabric but then I couldn't resist making 5 more in awesome Japanese cotton/linen prints and they're very popular here. They make a lovely rattling sound and have a really pleasing weight to them. Oh, and they do have that authentic beanbag smell. Mmmm....

Oh, and I guess we do have another use for beans. Cole is trying them today. But the baked variety and I didn't make them. Thank you Amy and your organic canned goods. ;-)