DIY: Airplane Activity Center and Pillow

We travel. A lot. I've mentioned this before when I posted our Travel Gear Favorites Part 1 and Part 2. And tomorrow we board a plan to fly to Houston with two new firsts: Madi is walking and we have bought a seat for her on the plane. I am truly terrified picturing her walking running up and down the aisles smiling and talking to strangers. Crossing my fingers that having the seat helps (not hinders) and also for a baby-friendly plane and crew, haha.

And to try and help with this new stage, I thought I would try to make something to encourage her to want to stay on our laps. I'm not creative enough to come up with this on my own, but I saw the idea on another blog and decided to engineer my own.

Speaking of engineering though - have you seen what happens when two engineers have a baby? Girl spent a good 20 minutes taking all three of these rings off and putting them back on, flipping them to be the correct way, and matching them up. I believe we have a future engineer on our hands!! (And I am thrilled because we all know engineers might get made fun of for being nerdy, but you always want us around when something breaks... ;-) )

So back to the tutorial... The Activity Center can be hooked onto the tray table in front of you via the elastic straps around the back. It could also sit in Madi's lap when she's in the high chair and potentially even double as a pillow once the toys are removed.

Here are the supplies that I used in making Madi's DIY Airplane Activity Center:

• zipper
• stuffed animal stuffing
• ribbon
• velcro
• elastic
• 2 pieces of material roughly 11x18 inches (from a couple quick searches the size of the tray appears to be around 10x17 so I had a bit of extra around for the hem and, gasp, I was a bit lax on the measurements figuring it's not a big deal if it's a bit large/small)

I sewed a zipper on and attached a keychain so Madi can pull it back and forth as well as a piece of ribbon and two pieces of velcro. I can attach toys to either the ribbon or velcro using hooks or our secure-a-toy gadgets.

Once those were sewn onto 1/2 of the fabric, I pinned the two pieces of fabric together (right sides together). I sewed around the edges leaving space to sew in the elastic as well as space to turn it right side out and stuff it. Then I sewed the elastic in place and closed up the edge I'd used to stuff.

Like I mentioned above, I plan to use it when we fly to the States tomorrow. Hopefully between the allure of a new toy and being able to change out what's on it she will be entertained for say, 10 minutes?! ;-) So we'll see how it works! Either way though it sure looks cute!