Thursday, September 3, 2009

How to make a simple pet bed

Our "kitten" Hobbes has started to chew on fabric at night when he is locked up in the bathroom. So far he has destroyed 1 pillow, 2 blankets, a bathmat and a towel. We know he's doing it mainly because he's cranky about being locked up, but since he runs around at night which causes our neighbor to get cranky we needed to come up with something he could sleep on but not chew on. LT and I decided a pillow that was made out of a tougher material and rounded might hopefully keep Hobbes from eating it.

I had some canvas material laying around for making grocery bags so I decided to try using that. So far he's had the pillow around a month and has bit it once but never chewed it up. Our other cat Doomy ended up getting jealous of Hobbes's new bed so I made him one a couple weeks after that.

Since the first one was so successful with the cats I decided to take a few pictures of how I made it.



Here's Doomy helping me with the pattern. I made a circle out of cardboard with a 22 inch diameter then I traced it onto the fabric I had folded over so I could cut out two circles.


After I cut out the two circles I measure a long rectangle for the center, I made it 8 inches wide and about 70 inches long. At the time I didn't measure the length I just kinda made a circle with the fabric around my cut out circles to guess the length needed.


After it was all cut out I just sewed the circles onto the edges of the rectangle and added stuffing. Here is Doomy modeling his new pillow.

Both pet beds turned out really well. I'll probably make more pillows shaped like this for the couch next.