Making a Corn hole bag
So In addition to building the Corn hole boards, I needed to get some Corn hole bags for the game as well. The hubby wanted these to be regulation as well, but at $22-$28 for a set of 8 I figured I could save some more money and make these too.
You really only need a few things to make a Corn hole bag; Duck fabric, Feed Corn, thread and time (a sewing machine is optional, but highly recommended)
So the first thing I had to do was make the trip to JoAnns to get some Duck fabric, you can also get it at Walmart and Hobby Lobby, but seeing as I had a coupon for 1/2 off I figured I'd save a little money. I HATE bringing the boys with me to craft stores, it makes them miserable which in turn makes ME miserable. So if I can I try to leave them home with daddy and go on my own.
When I asked what colors he wanted for the bean bags I got told 'Bold manly colors that you can see in the grass.' Well that doesn't narrow it down too much, but luckily they have picture messaging and these are the colors that he ended up choosing. I got 9" of each color, but because the edges were so crooked on the end of the fabric the nice lady at the cut table gave me a little extra.
The next thing that I had to hunt down was the feed corn. There was only one place I could think of to get it and that was Murdochs, luckily they opened one in Westminster so I didn't have to drive all the way to Longmont to get it. I really only needed 8lbs of feed corn for the bags since each bags uses 16oz. The smallest bags of corn they had were in the bird food aisle and they were $4.99 for 4lbs. But a nice employee showed me this bag in the livestock aisle, it's 50lbs of feed corn, but it was also only $13.49. When I asked her what the difference was she told me they wash the bird food one more... So I had to decide, should I pay the $1.25 a pound and just get what I needed or should I be frugal and spend the couple of extra bucks for the ginormous bag of corn which was like $0.27 a pound. Needless to say I lugged home 50lbs of feed corn... I really should of thought about how I was going to get it up the stairs, but somehow I managed to do it without any assistance. What will I do with all that extra corn? I'll probably just make some extra bags in case of busted seams and lost bags. I think I may also make some smaller lighter ones for the munchkins to use since the Rooster complained that the bags were too heavy. 
So first things first the fabric needs to be cut into 7" squares. I used a self healing mat, rotary blade and quilting ruler. These have gotten a lot of use for many of my projects, but you could just as easily use a pair of scissors. You need to have 2 squares per bag so a total of 8 squares for a set of 4 bags.
The next step is to sew three sides of the bag completely shut. I also sewed part of the fourth side shut to make closing it a little easier. Also cutting off the corners will allow your bag to have sharper corners.
Flip the bags inside out using the opening and then push the corners out. I used a chopstick to get the corners as sharp as possible.
After the bags are flipped inside out it's time to fill them. Regulation bags are supposed to be 14-16oz. Since the hubby wanted these as accurate as possible I used a cheap kitchen scale to measure them. I made them closer to the 16oz mark because as you throw them the corn gets broken up and dust comes out so over time the bags get lighter. I also cheated and used the top of a 2 liter pop bottle because the regular funnel I had was too narrow for the corn to go down easily. If you don't have a scale or just don't care about exact weight I found that 16oz is roughly 2.25cups of corn.
When you are done filling the bags sew the opening of the bag shut. I used a triple stitch on the bag which means that the bag has been stitched shut 3x so that it shouldn't pop open even with some pretty heavy abuse. Also even though the opening was only about 1/3 of the bag I opted to sew across the entire side for added strength.
I did do some tests with the beanbags to make sure they wouldn't pop open. I chucked them at the ground as hard as possible. I threw them from one end of the house to the other and then I let the munchkins have at them for a little. They threw them, sat on them and yes, they even jumped up and down on them, but there was no busted seams or leaking corn, there was however lots of giggling.
The entire project, once I had the supplies, took me about an hour and that was with the munchkins constantly asking "What are you doing? Can I help? Can I eat that? (the corn), Can I play with those?" They were VERY happy when I let them test the bean bags. But I also got begged for some of their own, so the next time I'm at JoAnns I'll get some more Duck fabric and use up some of the corn and make them their own.
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| The finished products. |
Pumpkin Watch
Today's count is 17 plants with the little flowers and mint finally making a true appearance. I'm going to try to replant some of the pumpkins this week to give them a little more room to grow.
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