Sew Baby Travel High Chair

While E's sitting skills have improved dramatically in the past couple of years, she's still not reliable enough that she can sit at the table unrestrained.  I suspect that would be a head injury waiting to happen.  At home she uses a booster seat and at restaurants we usually just take her in her adaptive stroller.  Most people's houses, though, aren't handicapped-accessible (ours included so far), so we tend to run into issues when we're visiting people at mealtimes and forget to bring along the booster seat.  We're usually about an hour down the road before one of us realizes it's still strapped to her chair at the table.  We also run into space issues when we're taking longer trips.  We are continually putting off the purchase of a minivan, although that day is coming soon.  I saw a few tutorials for fabric high chairs and thought that would be the answer to our various seating and bulk issues, but I wasn't 100% sold on the design of any of them. 

Enter the Sew Baby Travel High Chair pattern, which I happened to see at Joann Fabrics a couple of weeks ago.  While it's more of a fabric-hog than some of the tutorials, I also thought it would work out better for E.  I dug out some ancient stash fabric --  I remember buying this when O. was a baby with the intention of making a pouch sling, but never got around to it.  (Believe me, there was no shortage of baby carriers around here, so that wasn't a big loss. I made at least three other pouches, not to mention mei tais and ring slings.  I was a bit of a babywearing hoarder.)  I think it's a stretch twill.

Cutting out the pattern piece, fabric, and batting may have taken longer than sewing it up.  The only change I made was to use 1.5" hook & loop left over from my cloth diaper making days instead of the recommended 3/4".

I'm quite happy with how it turned out.  It's sized for up to 2T, but E is skinny and can still wear 2T pants as capris, so I decided to just go with it as-is.  She has some growing room, but it would be quite easy to size up for a larger child who needs positioning help.

It folds up even smaller than I'd hoped and fits easily in the side pocket of the Thirty-one bag that we usually use for her things.

Something like this has been on my to-sew list for about a year, so I'm pretty psyched to finally be able to cross it off!