I was wandering through the stores, trying to find a good bed for our puppy...but I was having a hard time letting myself spend 15-some bucks on a bed... SO i went to Joann's and looked at McCall's patterns, and saw this.... BUT I didn't use the pattern, just stole the idea.
I bought the fleece in the remnant bin, spending a total of 5 bucks on that and another 2 dollars on polyfill... The puppy just LOVES it. The best part is, she likes to chew on the "tags" on the sides, and then she grabs 'em and tries to pull her bed around.
If anyone is interested, I will put up a tut on how i did it. It's not complicated at all!
First off, thanks so much for all the feedback!! I was SO proud of how my little fleece bed made it to a Hot Post!!
and now, it's the tut!! i apologize if it's too simplified, but i wanted to make it very clear in case people have never made tied blankets before.
the concept is based on tied fleece blankets, so if you know how to do it, this will be super easy for you!
first off, the supplies
- fleece (i used two different colors, which i bought from the remnant bin, bought around a yard EACH
- scissors or a rotary cutter
- ruler
- safety pins
- polyfill or some other sort of filling
the next thing i did was lay out the fabric one on top of the other, the sides i don't want showing facing IN, then i folded the fleece in half, so it would reduce the cutting time
i decided on how big to make this one, the first one i just sort of cut out an oval shape to make it larger, but this one i wanted to be a circle. i measured how far it was from the fold to the end, which was around 19 inches. then i measured 19 inches from the bottom, pinned my tape measure to that spot, and preceded to spin the tape around like the hands on a clock, and put in a safety pin every once and awhile.... hopefully the pictures will help this make sense. i did this to try to make a nice circle.
the center pin which i rotated around
the measurement out from the center pin
the final pin layout
i cut along the pins to help keep it in a circle shape, then i unfolded it.
pretty close, cept for the selvage
i put a safety pin the middle, to keep both pieces from slipping too much while i was cutting
then i determined how big i wanted my tags to be. i made mine 4 inches long and 1.5 inches wide, i measured the first one, and then just free hand cut following the first cut around the circle.
the first cut
what it looks like around the entire circle, you can use either scissors and i have heard of people using rotary cutters and cutting mats
after its cut, then i begin to tie knots.. which is just a normal square knot. i usually try to tie evenly (hope i explain this okay), i pick one color, ex. the yellow and I will tie that first, then tie the blue on top. this keeps both sides of the tag even.
remember to keep these TIGHT so stuffing doesn't come out,
WARNING: don't pull TOO hard, sometimes the fleece will rip
continue this around the entire circle, EXCEPT for the last 3 or so (about 5 inches) it will begin to get all bunch and ugly looking.
in progress, notice the wrinkling...
all knotted, except for the last few
yeah! almost done!! :-) now take your choice of filling, for me it was polyfill (the cheapest stuff, ha ha) when I am stuffing, i rip apart the polyfill, trying to give it a bit more air. stuff your bed however you want, i did some extra in this one, trying to give it some more loft! when you are satisfied with your stuffing, just tie off the last three and WAH LAH! all done!
NOTE: since the two pieces are the same size, i noticed that whatever piece is on top tends to have extra "wrinkles" in it. if you don't want any wrinkles, maybe you can make the circle a few inches smaller?? but i am not sure on how to do that at all. Tashi (my puppy) really likes the extra wrinkles, she "digs" around in her bed and tries to hide her toys.. so up to you!
let me know if you have any questions!! and please post your beds if you make some! it will be really cool to see everybody's "babies" hanging out! :-)
