I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and welcome to the new year! I don’t know about you, but I am excited to see what 2012 brings!
I live in the upper Midwest and this is the first time since I can remember that we have not had snow for Christmas. I hardly know what to do with myself. Normally my family will play snow football, go cross country skiing, sled, and make snow angels when we all get together for Christmas. With no snow, those activities are not possible. My sister and I live a few miles apart and co-hosted Christmas this year and wanted to have fun activities to do. We planned all the snow activities and waited for the snow, which never came. So, getting creative, we came up with some other ideas. Bean Bag Toss (also called Corn Hole because the bags can be filled with feed corn instead of beans) was one of the ideas because it is easy for everyone to play and tons of fun. The problem was that no one owned the Bean Bag Toss game so I decided to build it. Well, I decided to build it and convinced my hubby to help me. Hubby and I had been wanting to build the game for some time so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to take the plunge. I found this great tutorial here, and we set to work.
I got all the lumber (and got it cut at the store) so it was just a matter of drilling a few holes and putting in screws.
We first built the frames.
Then we put the plywood tops on and put in screws every 12 inches.
The Hubby cut out the holes. There was a slight mishap here where the jigsaw cord was severed due to the chord slipping down in the way of the blade. No one was electrocuted, and Hubby learned how to rewire a power tool.
The holes were sanded down, and then the legs were attached. The legs are secured in such a way that allows them to fold up inside for flat storage.
I sewed the beanbags using leftover heavy curtain material. Each square was cut to 7 in.x 7 in. and I sewed the sides up, leaving a 2 inch hole at the bottom for filling with beans. I also zigzagged around where I did the straight stitch for extra strength.
Pinto beans, while a “great source of fiber”, are also great bean bag stuffing.
I filled each bag with about 1 lb. of beans.
I toted the filled bags back up to my sewing room. Using pins to hold back the beans, I sewed close to the edge of the bottom of the bags to close up the hole.
Viola!
My hubby and I enjoyed building it together, and we played many rounds of the game in our basement over Christmas. My family also got in many games while we were all together to celebrate. I still have to paint it, but I will do that in the spring when I can be out in the garage with the paint. It will be a great outdoor game come summer.
This post is linked to Southern Lovely and Sew Much Ado.
7:17 pm on January 3rd, 2012
Your bean bag toss came out great! Great idea about reinforcing the “bag” stitching… that is something I would definitely do the next go around! I’m glad our tutorial could be of value to you!
10:42 am on January 5th, 2012
That’s great! Really love it. Good work, both of you!