That’s Using Your Noodle!

In preparation for our upcoming weekend cruise I spent the day getting prepared.  Did I plan out our provisions?  Nope.  Did I replace the secondary bilge pump so that we would have a backup?  Not that either.  Today the most important thing we needed to get ready was our floaty toys.  I looked at all of the websites for our local big box stores to see what they had to offer.  While there were a ton of chair style floats, most seemed like they wouldn't last out the weekend, others were way too expensive so I decided to design my own.

We had some leftover Sunbrella from a previous project, so I decided to start there.  Next was the float, off to Walmart to grab the fattest noodles that I could find.  Back home, with measuring tape in hand, I measured the diameter of the noodle, added seam allowances and sat on the tape to estimate just how big I wanted to seat to be so that we would float at the proper height in the water.  I added all of these numbers together and came up with 70”, the theoretical perfect fabric length for our chairs.

Below are my pictures of the construction. 

1" Seam Allowance (1/2" + 1/2") On Long Edge

Long Edge Folded Over to 14 1/2" Mark 

Sailrite Hem Tape On the Edge Hemmed
To 4", Making it Easier To Position
at the 14 1/2" Mark

After a quick test I realized that the noodle doesn't sit at the top of the water, which I would have realized ahead of time had I thought about our noodle use from last summer.  That changed the dimension of the fabric for round two.  

Below is the drawing and stitching guide for the finished chair.

The finished chair

Ziggy modeling the finished chair!

And now back to our regularly scheduled boat maintenance!