Girl Scout Troop 1138: Sit-Upons

A part of the Girl Scouts requirements for Daisies to bridge to Brownies, we needed to do an activity with an older troop. A couple of girls from a Junior sister-troop came to visit us. They talked with our girls about the things Girl Scouts can do as a Brownie. They also helped our troop make their sit-upons.

Our visiting Junior scouts helping our troop.

Our finished Sit-Upons!

How to Make a Sit-Upon

A "Sit-Upon" is a homemade, usually waterproof pillow/pad used to protect your backside when you "sit upon" it on the ground. Here is how our troop made their sit-upons. Steps 1 - 5 were done ahead of our meeting so that our girls could spend their time stitching their pillows closed.

Materials needed for each sit-upon:
- Waterproof fabric
- Plastic lace
- Plastic grocery bag and stuffing (newsprint, more grocery bags, etc...)
- Stickers for decoration.

1. Start with a water-proof material. We used oilcloth fabric from Jo-Ann store for our sit-upon.

2. Our fabric was 47" wide, so it was cut in half length-wise to make the each piece about 24" on one side. It was then cut again at 18".

3. So each of our sit-upons was made with a piece of oilcloth 24" x 18".

4. Fold the piece of oilcloth in half along the 24" side to make a pillow finished size 12" x 18". You will then have three open sides of the pillow to stitch close.

5. Use a hole punch (I have a small-size hole punch) and punch a series of holes around the open edges of the sit-upon. I held the front & back open edges together with the hole punch so the holes all lined up.

-- The above steps where done ahead-of-time for the girls to save time during our meeting. --

6. Use a piece of plastic Rexlace or gimp to stitch the pillow closed. Tie a knot at the first hole, and loop the lace through the holes, going around the two sides of the pillow. Do not stitch the third side of the pillow closed yet.