Memories Made by a SAHM: June 2015

Easiest Puppy or Dog Bed!!!!

No seriously this will be the quickest and easiest dog bed I promise! I recently got the most adorable puppy and instead of spending tons of money on "stuff" for her I'm doing a bit of DIY. So I looked through my fabric stash and found some super cute flannel that was the perfect size to make her a bed for her kennel! Couldn't have worked out more perfectly and thought I would share with you all how I did it!

This fits a 19 by 23 inch wire Kennel!

Materials:

fabric (I used flannel, but any would work) measuring 41" by 26 1/2"
Stuffing, (I used leftover batting from quilt projects and extra flannel pieces that I couldn't make myself throw away)

Instructions:

First take your fabric and fold it in half with right sides together,

do this on the longer side like your closing a book if that makes sense.


fabric already serged with hole on the right side for my turning!

You will then sew around the three open sides, but leave a hole for turning it and stuffing! I did my hole on the right side opposite of the fold. I serged mine for extra stability, but if you don't have a serger just do a zigzag stitch.

close up of the hole I left, since I serged it I just ran off the fabric where I wanted my hole to go.

Now before flipping I decided I wanted to box the corners of this in order to get a fluffier bed, if you want to skip this you can! The bed just might be a bit big in the cage but it still will fit. If you don't box the corners your bed will look more like a pillow. (If skipping the boxed corners, skip down past the next 3 pictures and start reading there.)

To box the corners I first brought together the seams at each corner so that they met in the middle,

then measured 2 inches from the point and put in a pin. (picture below left)

Quick side note, this actually made a bigger "box" then I'd intended. It still fits the cage especially when puppy is squishing down on it, but I almost would measure 1-1 1/2 inches from point if you want a snugger fit in your cage.

you can see how this is the seams together with pin at 2"

when I serged this I lined my pin with the right needle

Now if you are serging this the serger will cut the triangle off for you, if you don't have a serger just zigzag a line where the pin is. Be sure if you are using a regular sewing machine that you secure your stitching at this point by either going forward and back a couple stitches or if you have a more advanced machine do a start and stop stitch at beginning and end.

You are sewing as if you'd sew over the pin, some people would draw a line to sew on I didn't I just eyeballed it because I didn't want to take the extra time. If you are sewing this on regular machine you don't have to cut the extra triangle piece off unless you just want to. Serging does it automatically so I went with that and sewed with my right needle lined up with the pin!


This is how corner will look after serging and triangles cut off

The pic above shows how it will look and should measure after cutting, like I said above this ended up being a bit deeper or bigger box then I intended. It measures about 3 1/2 inches once flipped, which makes for a good thick bed and only leaves a slight space on sides of cage when puppy isn't laying in it!

If you serged your puppy bed I recommend you put a little fray check at all the corners before you turn the bed. Just sort of an added security measure, but if you want to tuck the threads back in or some other thing you may do for the tails of your serging that would work too. They may be okay without any action but I just wanted to be extra sure.

Next flip that pillow right side out and stuff it as full as you want to! I didn't want to make it to firm, but I did want to be sure the pillow looked more like a rectangular or box shape. So I filled it to make it full but not stuffed. I used leftover fleece, flannel and quilt batting to fill our puppies bed because I had just enough on hand! So that saved me spending money and going to the store for this! If you don't hoard scraps of batting and fabrics like I do just fill this up with any kind of craft batting. Just be sure if you buy a bag of fiberfil stuffing that you fluff it out before stuffing it into the bed, this stuff is crammed into those bags and if you fluff it out it will go a long way for you!

Time to close up that hole! Just flip in the hem that wasn't sewn when you had it the wrong way so that your edges line up nice and sew it shut. I sewed this on my normal machine versus hand sewing closed as some might say to do. That way it's extra sturdy!!! So I pinned the hole closed and then sewed a straight line as close to edge as I could and once closed I went back over it with a zigzag stitch for added security.