Baby Dining Seat Harnesses

Home-made baby sitting harnesses (for sitting at table)

When our little granddaughter, baby I, was coming on holiday with us, we guessed there might not be high-chairs / baby seats available, either where we were staying, or in restaurants while eating out. So I thought I’d make a seat harness for travelling. Now we have 3 baby granddaughters, and, when they visit our home, our one purchased plastic booster seat is not enough. So we've also been able to use the harness at our home for the visiting babies. 

I'll tell you in detail how I did it on another post, so you can copy my ideas if you wish, and I will also give some other ideas I've found, if my approach doesn't work for you. My design, and those provided free by other people, are intended for personal use. 

You can see Baby I using the harness I designed, below,  at the age of about 16 months. But she's been using it since before she could sit up properly on her own.

The great thing about making your own chair harness is that you can personalise it as much as you want. Of course, my own design works best for me. But first, here are some other ideas. They may work better for you. 

As always, I started with an internet search, and eventually made my own adaptation using several different ideas, but mainly the Canadian Living design, which you'll find further down. But I am nonetheless very grateful to all the people who have inspired me, and their designs may help others, so I’ll reference them all below.

Sleeping Baby Baby Chairseat

A very nice design, and quite easy to make. 

(Reproduced with Jan's permission - thank you, Jan.)

The web site is Jan Andrea's, and her designs are also for personal use only, not for making items for resale. I found her site a bit too late for making my dining chair harness. But it also might not quite have worked for me at the time I was making one. I wanted something very sturdy and strong for our needs, as it would be in place of a baby's high chair in our house, and it would also need to support quite a young baby on holiday, who wasn't even sitting up properly then. We also might be using a variety of chairs in different places, so I wanted lots of flexibility. Jan Andrea's design would be ideal, though, for a harness you could easily stuff into your pocket or bag (more or less) for using when you are out and about; very suitable for a child that can sit up unaided, and isn't yet at the 'try to climb out' stage. In fact, it would be so quick and easy to make, you could make it on a Friday for a visiting grandchild at the weekend!

This Mama Makes Stuff Travel Chair

                                               

Picture copied from her web site.

This has really good instructions, and looks comfortable. The two side pieces come round the baby's tummy, and fasten with Velcro, and the long flap comes up inside the fastened side pieces, and doubles over. However, at the time I was making this, one grandchild could not yet sit up on her own, and the other was a wriggling 11 month old – with another one on the way.  This design could also have worked well, if I could have modified it to have some kind of shoulder straps, or more of a harness. But ideal for an older toddler. You could make the cushion part quite thick, as a booster, but I think you'd need to cut out round the legs.

Another version of the above but with video instructions?

This looks to be more or less the same but has video instructions. No longer available.

Born to /Love Frugal travel

This is another easy to make basic pattern, which would easily fold up into a changing bag. However, I wouldn't think it would be very safe for a very young baby, as the support is quite low down on its body. The web site also has several other economic ideas for travelling with babies, e.g a booster seat made of old telephone directories. (Hey, soon these won’t exist any more!)

Sweet Seattle DIY high chair

                                                    

I really like this design, with a 5 point harness. If it was for more regular use, I would probably go for this type of design. But there is no tutorial that I can see.

And finally, the  Canadian Living Roll-up baby chair design, the one I modified to make my version. Sorry, there are no longer any pictures in the article on their web-site. However, you can get the general idea from the pattern: 

This is a very easy design, but I felt not sturdy enough for our needs without adaptation, as the ties are just binding tape – but the pattern can easily be adapted to make a sturdier seat, as I did.

So all of these designs have a lot going for them, but are not quite what I wanted. You can find out about the one I made on another post to follow.