What did you do with your Sunday morning?

I spent mine making a new dog bed for Ripley.  Oh yeah.  Rock out.

When I was visiting California over Christmas, the woman who rents a room from my parents was making no-sew baby blankets for some of her friends for gifts.  Though I'm more a fan of the nice clean lines of a sewn baby blanket, I do understand why these are good for babies and toddlers as a lot of them like to play with tags and this thing basically has tag-like thingies hanging all around it.  It's also a really good, inexpensive gift to make for people who are having a baby, particularly if you don't know how to sew or don't own a sewing machine as all you need are two equal-sized pieces of fleece and a pair of scissors.

Anyway, back to the dog bed.  When we first got Ripley, we bought her a dog bed.  That's her sleeping in it the first day we got her.  Isn't she so adorably cute and tiny?! Look at her tiny little nose and feet!  Ok, back to the bed again.  She didn't really see it as a bed, instead it was more like an oversized chew toy for her own personal entertainment.  She was also very particular about the placement of this "chew toy." The base of the bed had to be exactly halfway up the stairs and the pillow could only be in either the kitchen or the office, next to a doorway.  Steve called it "Ripley's feng shui'ing."  Needless to say, that bed does not exist anymore.  Well, it does, but but not as a bed.  More like lots of tiny pieces of red fleece and hollow-fiber filling.  And even if it did still exist, she's a bit too big for it now anyway.

Maybe she was trying to tell us something.

So one day I was browsing sewing patterns on the web and amusing myself at the silly costumes that people make for their pets (particularly pugs) and I came across a no-sew dog bed which used to same concept as the baby blanket I mentioned above.  The site I was on wanted something ridiculous like £9 for the pattern, which is stupid because you could look at the picture and figure out what they did so I decided to make it.

I had some extra fleece from a double-sided picnic blanket which I bought from Dunelm for the sole purpose of cutting up for little blankets for Chaz, but obviously a hedgehog doesn't need a massive amount of fabric so I got a couple of good-sized pieces for Ripley's bed, one bigger than the other, and a double-sized duvet folded up so it fits the dimensions of the fabric.  I then had to cut bajillions of fringes on each side of the fleece.  Let me tell you, if you don't have sharp scissors, this is THE MOST ANNOYING THING EVER!!!  Then you just tie a bunch of knots, throw the dog bed on the floor and let doggie enjoy.  Here is Ripley enjoying her new doggie bed.  Hopefully, this one won't be torn to bits like the last one.