Final Project – Martha Cryan

Quilted Bean Bag Chair

Motivation

I planned to make a quilted bean bag chair that would be an appropriate size for an adult. I was inspired by these chairs that were in the Carnegie Museum of Art:

I think that furniture design in general is very exciting, and by creating a bean bag, I wanted to be able to explore textiles that interest me while exploring furniture. 

Materials and Construction

The bean bag was created by stitching together 6 square textiles in the shape of a cube. I purchased styrofoam pellets to use as filling, then filled a cube made of muslin (dimensions around 25 cubic inches) with them. Then, I constructed the 6 sides of the quilted outside separately and sewed them together. 

This pattern was found in a quilting pattern book. This side is meant to serve as the “top” of the chair. 

The following are the 4 other sides that are visible.

   

What I Learned / Next Steps:

This project helped me understand quilting better, and helped me understand the challenges of quilting in a new way. I realized how difficult and time-consuming quilting can be, but this also motivated me to try and develop my sewing and quilting skills. While I probably won’t make another beanbag in the near future, I do plan to work on more quilting, and hopefully will build off of what I learned in this project.