Dog bed cover from fabric scraps

You've probably realised by now that my puppy, Bridget, makes an appearance quite frequently in this little blog of mine! Well she is my furbaby, so she does get spoilt alot of attention in our household. Ok yes, she gets spoilt too.

She does have her moments though. Like the dog bed I bought her when she first came to live with us. She was a tiny 1.2 kilos (2.6 pounds) and was too small to even climb onto the bed! She spent the first few months sleeping on a towel on the floor.

She got bigger, of course and discovered sleeping on the bed was more comfortable than the floor. She also discovered a love of zippers. Well, of chewing them off anyway.

I decided to make a new cover for her dog bed, however, once I took off the old cover, I realised what a sorry state the bed was actually in. All the poly filling inside had moved around, leaving it looking like a right old mess.  

Some re-stuffing was clearly in order.

I cut a decent sized hole in the top of the bed and then using the stuffing from some old polyester filled pillows.

I packed it firmly into the bed, trying to ensure it was even and not as lumpy!

Then using a simple stitch, I handsewed the hole back up. For extra strenth, I then blanket stitched over the edge.

Clearly the little miss was impatient to get her bed back. She decided to come and take a rest before I'd even put a new cover back on it!

Now for the cover.

To avoid the chewing off of any NEW zips, I decided to make a super simple pillow slip to cover the bed. Here's how:

Firstly, select your fabric. I used a dark coloured linen for the bottom and a patterned furniture fabric for the top. They were just some scraps I had in my sewing drawer.

Use the old cover as a template, cut a rectangle from your chosen fabric, adding a little extra for seam allowances.

Do the same for the other side of the cover, but this time, add extra for a seam allowance around all sides, as well as extra for 'tucking in' the slip. Oh yeah and it's a good idea to wash and IRON all your fabric before sewing.

Pin the insides of the fabric together.

Then sew together with the front 'good' sides facing in. You'll also need to fold the extra 'tucking' bit of fabric over and sew that into the sides. Think of a pillow case - I'm hopeless at trying to describe it, but get a pillowslip and turn it inside out if you need to work out the best way to do it! 

If you have a serger, you can finish the edges of nicely. I don't, so i decided to do a zig-zag stitch around the sides as well as a straight stitch. Gives it some extra sturdiness.

Once you're done, turn it inside out and put the pillowform back inside, carefully tucking it into the extra flap of fabric.

And there you have it! A puppy-approved dog bed cover. With no zips or buttons to chew off too!

No getting her off it now.

Happy sewing!

 

linking up with

Chair cover project FAIL

Do you remember the feeling when you first moved out of home?

The excitement bubbling in your belly, the prospect of boundless freedom?

The thoughts of 'now I can eat/sleep/watch/play whatever I want, whenever I want!'

A little twinge of nerves, a fleeting moment of sadness but plenty of determination to do it and make it on your own.

Do you remember what your apartment/ house looked like? I suspect it was much like my first share house - a mishmash of second hand furniture, hand-me-down kitchenware and some well-used, but well-loved whitegoods. But you made it work, cause it was all yours.

A few years ago, my parents gifted me four leather dining chairs that they no longer had a need for. They were bright (each in a different colour), funky and just what I needed. By the time they reached our current house, they'd seen their fair share of dining rooms and were starting to show their age.

A makeover project was born.

With The Boy away for a week on business, I pulled out a seam ripper and started pulling the chair covers apart. It didn't seem too complex at the time (HAH!) - the covers had long zips down each of side of the chair, which when unzipped, slipped off the chair completely (with just some velcro sticking the fabric under the base of the chair).

I made my way down to Spotlight and picked myself up a serious amount of teal striped (my first mistake) fabric, ready to create some patterns and got the project underway.

.

..

...

By the end of that week, I'd managed to re-cover a grand total of ONE chair (and pulled apart a second). And that's all.

Fast forward 9 months and I've done didly-squat. This is what we've been putting up with since then.

Yep. A blue chair, a red chair, a yellow chair (in a state of disrepair - see below) and a wonky looking striped fabric chair.

Did you notice how I've strategically placed the re-covered chair and the dodgy yellow one on the far-side of the table?

So what went wrong?

Mistake one - choosing a fabric with stripes. It ain't easy lining up all those stripes on different pattern pieces. It's even harder when you've got zips down each side of the chair - it looked straight off the chair, but once zipped up, it began to pull.

Mistake two- still having my L plates on. I like to sew, and am good at the basics, but the furniture upholstery was a little too much for both me and my nan's old sewing machine. I broke a few too many needles and with the heavy fabric and wadding underneath, the machine kept jamming. It got to the point where even a straight line of sewing was more than I could handle.

Mistake three - giving up. I wasn't going to be defeated with that first chair. But once  it was done, the thought of doing it three more times was absolutely exhausting.

So where to from here? Structurally, they are still really great chairs, so I don't want to just replace them, but I can't bring myself to recover them totally.

I needed inspiration.

No, not the dog. (What a poser. She seriously tries to get in every photo I take). The new rug!

Pretty huh! It's from Bunnings (an Australian Hardware store of all places!) I've looked at it everytime I've stopped in there over the past few months and finally decided that I just HAD to have it. I was so keen to get it under the table that I didn't even take a 'before' photo without it.

It even takes the focus off the chairs (somewhat). So now I'm back on the chair cover re-do project. But this time, I'm going in simple. I've decided on some simple chair slips to go right over the top.

No zips, no wadding.

In a plain fabric. Perhaps one of these:



Fabric from Polyvore - light blue & brown tweed

 



Or this sort of colour - in a microfibre finish - chair for sale on ebay

 

Wish me luck! Another project to add to the list.

Amy

The death of a feature wall

The Boy was away this past weekend which allowed me to get a few things done around the house without any interruptions! I decided to tackle the one thing that has bugged me since day dot. The red wall.

Lemmie explain. Our house is an older house. Like pushin' 50 years old.


As such it has some endearing (and not so endearing) features. Some of the former include the lovely rosewood timber floors, a dark timber decorative plate rail around the walls and ornate moulding around the ceiling.


For some crazy reason, the previous owners decided there was only one thing to do to tie all of these old school touches together. So they painted a red feature wall.


'So what?' I can hear you say. 'I've got a red feature wall and it's THE BOMB!'


I don't doubt that. And good for you. Buuuttt let me try and get across what kinda red I'm talking about. Think a bright, yet burnt orangey-red. Think fire engine red, on a fire engine that’s been sat in a field to rust for oh, 20 years or so. It's dark and oppressive, yet bright and blinding at the same time. Ok, enough of the descriptors - check it out for yourself.

Exhibit A: the red wall

Actually I think my camera has towned down the un-awesomeness of that red. Please don't tell me you think it looks ok. I've already had this argument discussion with The Boy, ten times over ("c'mon, it's not that bad…. I kinda like it… can't you leave it be?") So, being home alone, I seized the opportunity to paint out the red wall.

I popped down to bunnings and picked up 2L of Dulux one coat primer. I used the online calculator at the bunnings website to see how much I would need for two coats. Dulux advised that one litre would be enough to cover 16m2.

  

I also picked up some painters tape and a decent sized drop sheet whilst I was there. My very sweet Dad (Daddyo, I he is referred to in our house!) very kindly dropped over his painting box, which saved me having to buy brushes, rollers, trays etc, which certainly helped the back pocket.




 I was a bit concerned about making a mess and getting paint on the skirting boards or the plate rail as they are such a dark timber, but the painters tape worked a treat and there was barely any seepage (fortunately the Dulux one coat is acrylic, so any spills I was able to clean up with water. Gotta love that!) Now, what you're all waiting for - the  after shot!!

Exhibit B: red wall be gone !

Nice huh! Anywhoo, it seemed that once I got started, I couldn’t stop, so I got to working on the entry wall and one of the other loungeroom walls that was in need of a makeover. I'm still undecided as to what to go with as a top colour - I like the contrast of the white against the timber, but was afraid there's now too much white in the room. I'm thinking about a 'mocha' colour, like Dulux Natural Beige, or Tuft, but don't the room to be too dark, know what I mean? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

For the most part, Miss Bridget slept through the painting process.

Life's tough for her obviously.

A little hint or two for first timers -

a) Unless youre some kind of painting freak, you'll get paint on your hands / arms / face / hair / feet at some stage. Wash it off while it's still wet.  Painted fingernails are all well and good, but paint UNDER your fingernails sucks.

b) Take the time to prep the walls. I know, you just wanna get in and get a-paintin'! Seriously. Don’t. Fill any holes with a filler (I like Nordsjo Fine Filler - shrinkage factor is low, dries quickly and one tube goes a long way). Fill the holes with putty, scrape off the excess and gently sand when dry. Taping off all the edges will help if you don’t have a super steady hand or if you're cutting-in abilities aren't up to scratch. I also taped newspaper to the skirting boards after I taped them off which nicely caught any drops off the roller.

c) If you have a puppy who likes to chew things, keep her away or otherwise occupied. A whole roll of sandpaper and a paint roller were causalities as a result of this. (Seriously - can you imagine chewing sandpaper? Urgh!)

Happy painting! 

It all started with an imaginary dog.

'Future puppy', as we used to call it, was the dog we were going to get when we moved out of our rented apartment. Despite our building being very unfriendly towards pets (and ‘spies’ in the building on the lookout for signs of unwelcome residents being snuck in), we toyed with the idea of getting one anyway, keeping it secretly in the spare bedroom, taking it for walks under the cover of darkness and hoping to hell that it didn’t bark during the day.

Fortunately we discarded that idea as being completely ridiculous unable to be sustained in the long run.

So we did what we thought was the most logical step in order to make Future Puppy a reality.

We bought a house.

 Yup.

A house. Now I’m sure you might be thinking, ‘um… couldn’t you have found a pet friendly rental? Just hung out at the dog park? Bought a goldfish to tie you over?’

Yes, we could have. Your point......?

ANYWHOO, not 3 weeks after moving in, our future puppy just became puppy. Little Miss Bridget became the newest member of the household.

Seriously. How cute is she?! And that smooshy little face? MELT!!

Fast-forward a few months and we're finally settled - Bridget is house trained, sleeping past 4.30am and we're a happy family of three.  Um and then it kind of dawned on us that our sweet little house needed probably at the very least a FRACTION of the attention that we lavished on Bridget.

Which gets me finally to the point of this blog; to document the process of our first home going from oh… to woah!!, one DIY project at a time. So if you're wanting to kill a bit of time, procrastinating at work, or just legitimately doing some research on the what not to do with DIY, sit back, relax and enjoy!

Cheers!

Amy


Linking up to Debbiedoos Pet Party!