I shared a few weeks ago how I use batting scraps and donated decorator fabric to make dog beds for my friend to donate to Richmond Animal League. She volunteers there and it's easy for me to give the beds to her and she can drop them off when she works there every other week. Since then I find myself seeing other things that I can use to create pet beds for her. When I was teaching at The Longarm Network last weekend I spied this. When the are at shows they have the longarms loaded with yards of fabric and batting for people to be able to practice and test out the machines. This is one of the leftover practice "quilts". They use these for lots of things. They are great for padding when moving furniture and equipment. But they can also make great pet beds and they let me take this one home. It took me less time to make this into 2 pet beds than it's taking me to write this blog post. See, it's big! I wanted the pet beds to be very cushy so I decided on 4 layers and that would be perfect if I cut this piece in half for 2 big chunks. I folded one of the chunks into quarters with the selvedge edges together and the raw edges together. Then I stitched those 2 sides. I made sure that I caught fabric on inside of the fold. I stitched through all the layers and I absolutely didn't care about this. After stitching the 2 sides I turned it inside out. See what I mean about catching all the layers of fabric on the inside? I had to go back and stitch a wider seam and, no, I didn't trim any seams. Now I could turn it inside out for real. Since the open edge doesn't have any raw edges I could just topstitch them closed. Before you say anything about the basting threads throughout the fabric, yes, I did remove them. Don't want a puppy to snag his teeth or toes on that. Fifteen minutes later I have 2 new dog beds for RAL. Bonus! I found this spool of thread before I started sewing them and was able to finish it off with the 2 dog beds. That means I get to buy 10 more spools of thread as replacement, right?
Mrs. Plum
5/9/2017 10:48:38 am
How great of you to make pet beds! Your justification for purchasing more thread made me laugh!
Gene Black
5/9/2017 02:50:01 pm
I had wondered what happens to these "test quilts" from longarm demos
Carolyn Sullivan
5/10/2017 06:59:24 am
I make dog Blankets out of mine, I have never thought of sewing them together like that. Great idea to get rid of those practice pieces
patty
5/10/2017 10:33:08 am
What a nice use of odds and ends! Comments are closed.
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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