I LOVE thrift stores. Like LOOOOOOVE thrift stores. I am an expert in the thrift shops in my surrounding areas. I can tell you the subtle differences in the different Goodwills in my county. I know where to go for used kids books vs vintage hats. I know where you are most likely to be able to score mint condition beaded mid century bags and where you are most likely to grab yourself a Christmas ornaments in July. One of the things I do with my time is sell vintage clothing and accessories in a shop on Etsy called Temple Kat Vintage so I am always on the hunt.

I had popped into one of my haunts the other day for a few minutes and saw this tick tack toe bean bag toss thing.

Now I don’t know about you but we have a long summer ahead of us. I want the boys to be outside so I am already starting to think of ways to entertain them. Since Alex is all about letters right now and Elliott just discovered the joys of bean bag tossing at a school carnival recently I scooped this puppy. At $1.97 I think it was a decent purchase.

The only problem was it had no bean bags. I figured with my limited sewing skills I could make that happen though. So I got out a couple of old t shirts and started cutting away. I cut a bunch of squares 4″ x 4″. Two colors, so that vicious battles can be waged between grey and black.

I took two of the squares and stitched them together by hand with a whip stitch (I totally just googled that so that I knew what to call it) around 3 1/2 of the edges. Then I turned it all inside out so that the seams were on the inside.

Then I measured out 1/4 cup of some dry black beans (I wanted to make sure all the bean bags had the same house regulation weight to them) and poured them into the opening.

Then I folded the edges of the opening in and sewed it all closed with a running stitch (totally googled that too).

Here are pictures of those steps. Behold my excellent stitchery!

I threw them around a little bit to make sure we weren’t going to have beans flying everywhere (quality control) and deemed them good enough!

The finished product is not what I would call the prettiest but I am not trying to impress Tim Gunn with my skills here (I do love Tim Gunn though). I am trying to entertain the under 8 crowd.

I think it worked.

There was a time when I would have stressed about making these pretty and perfect. These are just fine. The kids are going to have just as much fun with them.