Making a Dog Bed #2 - 17 October 2024

flowertron (72)in #crafts • last month

I told you in this post about how I made a quick bed for this gentle dog by joining two pillows and wrapping in a bath towel which I then sewed. That bed is now really bad and needing to be replaced but I still wanted to re-use some old bedding: a duvet and a duvet cover.

In order to make my ideal dog bed I’d have to take the whole filling from the duvet and then re stuff it to make the shape that acts as the sides or a little wall. I’d have to re assess how to take the whole filling out of the duvet checking it’s not too messy a process. As a reminder here's my ideal dog bed design:

This time I used a single duvet folded in half as shown in the photos below.

_{Single duvet and then folded in half - around 70 x 100 cm}

Our friend needed to try that for size and it was approved as comfy.

This design is similar to my first dog bed but bigger in scale. In other words all that's needed is folding a single duvet in half and then stuffing that into a folded duvet cover. As a duvet cover is like a huge pillowcase this means that there are 4 layers of fabric when sewing giving the cover durability. The polycotton fabric thickness is still okay for the ‘heavy duty’ sewing machine.

I pinned the two side seams to make it easy to sew and then followed the same original sewing line. This made the process very straightforward.

The hardest part of this project was the last seam. I stuffed the duvet folded in half into the cover which was very bulky and a bit difficult to handle. I only needed to sew one side seam.

It was bearable manageable to handle all the bulk on my small sewing table and maneuvering the bulk so it didn't interfere with the sewing . I pinched two sides of the duvet in between the two duvet cover side seams. By securing the two ends of the duvet along the seams it should not shift inside the cover.

The sewing machine struggled quite a bit and every so often I had to restart because the bulk of the project moved the sewing line and it went crooked in various sections. In hindsight there should have been more downward pressure on the sewing machine. I didn't want to fiddle with that so I persevered but the result's not 'perfect'.

The finished product is much bigger and comfortable than the first dog bed. Our muddy friend immediately tested it and fell asleep. I'm sure he thought it was 'pawsome'.

I know it’s only going to last another couple of months before it gets too dirty but this way I reuse old and unwanted bedding. I'm still hoping to try that other dog bed method soon though.

Here's my other post on this topic: