BEST DOOR STOPPER FILLING TO USE

This month’s Sew Club project was a cube shaped Door Stopper. Of course we worked on getting nice corners and so on but mostly we chatted about what’s the best door stopper filling to use.  The ones you buy in the shops have something heavy at the bottom to give it the necessary weight and polyester filling on top to push out the shape.  When I last did this project  I used dried beans as they were on special offer but some of my students were concerned that beans or rice could attract mice!!  Thinking this was a very good point, I decided to look into an alternative.

Whilst browsing the internet I soon discovered ‘weighted plastic beads’ designed for the job.  They are advertised specifically to weight down toys, door stoppers and blankets for Autistic children.  Unfortunately these beads would work out too expensive as I needed enough for 15 doorstops and like to keep costs to a minimum for my students. I also thought of using marbles but again they would be too expensive. And another idea was bags of sand, something I’d seen used so much in shop bought stoppers.  Although this would be much more affordable, I was worried I’d end up with sand all over my floor!

After looking at lots of options, I decided to go for a 10mm pebble gravel, which was a bargain from my local garden centre and gave a lovely crunchy beach sound!  The added bonus was that our garden path would be getting the left overs! The gravel was put in little plastic bags to keep it all together at the bottom of the doorstop and then the rest of the door stop was filled with polyester stuffing.

Another great tip is to use cushion inners/pads  for the polyester stuffing.  It’s much cheaper than buying specific stuffing.  I always stock up on these when I have to go to Ikea…  as well as calico which they sell at about £2 per metre.  It makes a very stressful experience feel a bit more worth while!!

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