Frugal Homemaking: Telephone Directory Turned Booster Seat

Am I the only one, or does it seem like the only thing you really ever use the Yellow Pages for is to boost some little one up to comfortable table height? In fact, that's the only reason we grabbed them from the foyer of our condo building!

Ben had taped together three or four directories for Grace, as Leah is now sitting at the table as well. It looked very...hillbilly. So I covered it up!

I chose to cover the fabric with Heat'n'Bond, so food messes could easily be wiped off the fabric.

Here's what you'll need:

Telephone directory(ies)

fabric (2 times the length and width of your directories, plus a few inches for depth and seams as well)

Heat'n'Bond (I used Lite, but I think Ultra would be better)

Quilt batting

Staple Gun

thread

Coordinating fabric (optional)

First I used the staple gun to tack the quilt batting down on the directory.

Heat'n'Bond is generally placed on fabric as a stabilizer and fuser. However, this product creates a plastic coating on fabric similar to oilcloth, which makes it an excellent choice for mess-prone areas. You normally fuse it to the back of the fabric, but I fused it to the front to create an oil-cloth type fabric. I followed the instructions as given on the package (except that I fused it to the front instead of the back of the material.)

You will obviously want to avoid touching your coated cloth with burners, irons, and any hot items, as it will melt the plastic!

I now had a large rectangle of coated fabric. In the next few steps, I created a bag to slip over the directories. Fold the fabric lengthwise, right sides together (shiny sides). Sew the long sides together, forming a "cylinder". Open up the fabric, so the seam is now in the center. Pin the seams down and sew one wide end of the cylinder closed. I now had a simple bag.

I wanted to create a boxed bottom to my bag, so I measured the depth of the directories. Mine was about 3 inches, so I divided that in half (1.5") and drew a 1.5" line on newspaper. At the center of the line (.75"), I drew another 1.5" line. These became the diagonals of my square. Connecting the four endpoints, I created the square and cut it out. I placed my pattern piece above the seam on the short side, and cut a square out of each corner, as shown in the picture above.

Still working from the wrong side, I opened the square corner to form a " T " with the short seam. I sewed each corner shut. I turned it right side out.