Bean Bag Toss Tutorial – DIY Cornhole Boards
This Bean Bag Toss Tutorial is brought to you by Sew Woodsy, a talented husband and wife team who blog everything from sewing crafts to woodworking.
Make a Bean Bag Toss
Materials Needed for Bean Bag Toss Tables
- Two pieces of ½ inch thick plywood cut to 2-foot x 4-foot
- Four, 8-foot 2×4’s
- Four, 4½ – inch long, 3/8-inch long carriage bolts
- Four, 3/8-inch flat washers
- Four, 3/8-inch wing nuts
- 1 box of 2½-inch wood screws
- wood filler
- 1-quart polycrylic
Cut the 2×4’s. You will need 4 pieces at 21-inches each and 4 pieces at 4-feet each. Using the 4-foot and 21-inch pieces, construct the tables’ frames with wood screws.
Measure 9-inches from the top of the plywood pieces and 12-inches from the sides and mark a center point for the hole. Use a compass to draw a circle 6-inches in diameter. Cut the hole with a jigsaw.
Place the plywood surface on the frame and screw in place.
Using the remaining 2×4 pieces cut 4 pieces for the legs of your tables. They will need to be 11-5/8 inches long with one end cut to a 99-degree angle. You want to round the opposite ends of the legs, so you can fold them away for storage.
Drill a hole in the frame.
Attach the rounded edge of the leg with the carriage bolts.
*Screw the flat washer and wing nut onto the carriage bolt.
Mr. Woodsy hard at work putting on the legs!
Fill all holes and blemishes with the wood filler, allow time to dry and sand your tables smooth. *Remember to sand along with the edges, too.
If keeping the natural look, dust your tables then paint with polycrylic. *If painting dust and prime them. Allow time to dry before painting with a semi or high-gloss latex paint.
Materials for the Bean Bags:
Sixteen, 7-inch by 7-inch squares of duck or outdoor cloth (2 colors, 8 per color)
Thread, Scissors, Straight pins
8 pounds of feed corn
Place two squares of cloth together face-to-face and sew a double-stitch with a ½-inch in-seam. Only sew three of the four sides.
Once your squares are sewn, turn each bag inside out (poke the corners out with a pencil). The bag will be 6-inches square.
Fill bag with 2 cups of feed corn. Bag should weigh approximately 1-pound when finished.
Fold the open ends of fabric inward 1/2 –inch, pin in place to keep corn in while you sew and double-stitch the seam.
Here is what it will look like when it’s on the machine. I bent 2 needles while sewing 8 bean bags. Make sure you are using a heavy-duty needle, and sewing slowly. It is extremely important that no corn go near the presser foot and needle! I wanted to top stitch around the entire bean bag, but after bending multiple needles I decided to not chance any more fatalities and just top stitch what needed to be stitch up (and move on)!
Repeat with remaining bags, until all 8 bags are completed.
Here is what the finished beanbags looked like.
Here is Mr. Woodsy testing out our new game!
Mr. Woodsy posing with his latest woodworking creation– demonstrating how easy it is to store (the legs fold in).
We hope you enjoyed reading about creating your very own bean bag toss. We are actually going to visit some friends this weekend, and plan to bring this up to their new cabin they recently built! It will make for a perfect house-warming gift!
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Sew Woodsy we are a husband and wife craft team. My name is Katie and I’m the voice and author behind the blog. I’m a beginner sewer, and love making new stuff for our home. You’ll often find me saying “I have West Elm taste on a Wal-Mart budget”. I’m always looking for great deals. I’m also a bit ambitious and author a cooking blog, Katie’s Cucina. Jon, aka Mr. Woodsy is the hobby woodworker. He admires all of Sandra’s work and although he is not techy (by any stretch of the imagination), he gets on the computer to specifically look at Sandra’s work! I can speak for Jon when I say we are so excited to be guest posting today on Sawdust & Paper Scraps. We love following along on Sandra’s blog since she likes to do what we both like to do, woodworking, sewing, and home DIY projects! When we committed to do a guest post for Handmade Christmas in July it took us a while to decide on what we wanted to make. I wanted to make sure we incorporated both woodworking and sewing into the project. We tossed around quite a few ideas with Sandra, and ultimately came up with making a Bean Bag Toss! It’s something that both “Mr. Woodsy” and I have wanted to make since last summer, and it really does make the perfect gift for family and friends!
Love this post, glad I found it. They call it Cornhole here too. It’s very popular among my husband’s friends so we’ll see if I can talk him into making one. And thanks for sharing your story about your needle fatalities. I broke 2 making a bag and thought it was just me.
Awesome! Saving this for my husband to make! Glad to see the legs fold in! We’d love to make one for camping and we’d need it to fold down to fit in the camper!
Great tutorial! This is a great gift for newlyweds too, we received one as a wedding present. Definitely a nice surprise and a nice departure from the toasters and crystal! 🙂
this is awesome!!! although, im not too good with drills and such, haha. but you should sell these on etsy! id be a definite customer!
Great Idea, Like Chantelle’s suggestion of multiple holes with different scores.
Beckie