T-Shirt Stadium Seat

 
I’ve been looking forward to this project for several months.  I usually get pretty grumpy at football games because I can only pay attention to the game for so long before I get a little bored.  Plus, the seats are pretty uncomfortable, and I get fidgety.

So I planned to find a sweatshirt at a thrift shop and use it to make a comfy, one-of-a-kind stadium seat.  When I couldn’t find an appropriate sweatshirt, I settled for an Under Armour t-shirt, size large.

Materials for this project were:
  • Foam square for seat (14″ x 14″)
  • Canvas webbing for handle (about 10″)
  • Zipper (22″ long)
  • Team t-shirt

The shirt was just the right size to fit over the foam.  I began by placing the shirt flat on the floor and centering the foam square over it.  There was a line where the fabric had  picked about 6 inches below the logo, so I made sure that area was not used.  Once I had the foam centered exactly where it needed to be, I drew a line around it with chalk and cut it out, leaving about an inch all the way around for the seam allowance.

If you look really closely at the bottom of the square I drew with chalk, you can see the bad spot on the fabric

 I repeated this step on the back of the shirt.

I figured the logo on the back of the shirt belonged on the back of the seat so made sure it was included.
I then used the remainder of the body of the shirt to form a gusset to link the top and bottom of the cover together.
I left this part of the shirt intact but cut it down to about 4 inches (the foam square is 3″ high) to leave .5″ seam allowances

 

It was a perfect fit – no stitching required!

Next, with right sides together, I pinned  the right side of the top (logo) side of the shirt to the right side of the gusset and stitched all the way around.

Stitching.
I wanted the zipper to be situated on the underside of the cushion, so I  pinned it to the right side of the bottom of the gusset and stitched, leaving the excess length hanging off the side.
Two pins side-by-side (far right side) is my sign to STOP stitching – and cut off the excess zipper
Once the zipper was stitched to the gusset, I pinned the bottom square (back of the shirt) to the bottom of the gusset, right sides together.  I began with the zippered edge, cut off the excess zipper, then continued around the other 3 sides. 
 
All pinned up with nowhere to go!

I created the handle out of the webbing by cutting a length of about 10″, then covered it with fabric from one of the sleeves from the shirt. 

Even though the seat is super-lightweight, I stitched the handle on with two parallel stitches on each side to make sure the fabric holds the weight of the cushion.  Don’t want any snagging!

 All stitched up…time to add the foam square!

I had an opportunity to test out my handiwork yesterday when we went to the football game with some friends.  Super comfortable!  Non-grumpy Laura.  More enjoyable game for all involved!

Time:  2 hours
Cost: less than $15

Thanks for reading!  See you next week,

Laura