Thursday, December 28, 2017

In the Art Room: How to Make Seat Sacks!

 I hope all y'all had a wonderful holiday! Ours was super low-key and relaxing. I've been taking time to catch up on projects for the art room...just this week alone, I've managed to start three new projects (and finish zero...no surprise there). While working on my latest project, I decided to film the process and share it with you cuz I'm super stoked: Seat Sacks!
 Heaven on Earth, aka the Dollar Tree, had seat sacks or over the chair storage in their education isle recently and I was so stoked. Currently, when my kiddos finish early and only have a few minutes to spare, they LOVE to go and get a dry erase board. However, I don't love the extra milling around the room when it's so close to clean up. However-however, I never wanna see a kid just SITTING in their seat, even if for a few moments, not creating something, anything. So when I saw these seat sacks, I thought they'd be the perfect solution: I could store dry erase boards in there (or, dry erase board SLEEVES with drawing sheets, YES!! More on those in a moment) and that would prevent extra movin' and confusion during cleanup. 
 Now, as you might know, I'm currently on an art room redo bender and I'm color coordinating EVERYTHING. So, while I was excited about these seat sacks, I was disappointed that the above were my only color options. By the way, you can purchase these in bulk here, if they are not available at your local Dollar Tree. 

So I went on a quest to find another source for the sacks. Y'all. These guys are COSTLY! Then I got the bright idea to SPRAY PAINT the sacks...so I bought one as a test and, um, no. That did not work. Not. At. All. 
The one that was sadly spray painted then became my pattern. I looked at the seat sack closely and realized it's a super simple pattern that requires very few supplies. Here's what I used:

* 2 yards of ripstop fabric. Really, 1.5 yards would have been plenty. I chose that kind of nylon fabric because I thought it would be easier to wipe down.

* 4 packages of bias tape. I am doing 4 sacks per table and this proved to be the right amount of tape. 

* Elastic. I used the wider kind.

Here are the directions:
Like I said in the video, I did this in assembly line fashion so as to get it done faster. I started by cutting everything out and then set to stitching all the red ones first, then the orange...this way I didn't have to keep changing out my thread and bobbin.
 I noticed online that there are a lot of other seat sack tutorials...so be sure to check out your options if you do this. I just went the route I thought was easiest. I don't plan to put anything heavy in these so I'm hoping that they'll be solid enough.
 In case you need those measurements again...
 I don't know if you noticed in the first photo but you'll see the kind of chairs that I have. These seat sacks fit them perfectly. If you decide to make these, you'll def wanna be certain it will work for your chairs!
 Of course I had to add a label! I got these labels made a while back from Dutch Label Shop. It says Art Will Rock You. This is the back
 And this is the front! I'll keep you posted on how these work out in my art room. They'll either be a hit or a miss...there never seems to be gray area in my art room!
 Do y'all use seat sacks? How so? Love to hear more!
My little assembly line of pocket making. Wish me luck!
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1 comment:

  1. Kirstin1/10/2018

    Perfectly brilliant! HA! I love it - when you can't find quite what you want... make your own! A familiar motto! Very smart and handy. :)

    ReplyDelete

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