Saturday, December 8, 2018

Simple No Batting Quilts for Pets


8 Simple Quilts in 1 Day


Looking for a quick Christmas gift for a pet lover? 
Gift their fur babies, and they will love you!

We tend to celebrate Christmas with few presents if any, but this year I wanted something for all the kids to open on Christmas Eve when we get together. There are no grandkids in this family, but there are 11 spoiled dogs. We decided to exchange dog presents this year. In between my longarming work last month, I squeezed in a day for my own Christmas sewing. Yes, of course, I would make them all quilts.




This idea started with one fabric, and a little story.


We wound up as homeschoolers one year (back before it was the cool thing to do), and it really worked for us as a family. First there were 4 kids, and soon 5, and our house was pretty well taken over by books, science experiments, and building toys for the next 17 years. Some years we needed a little more motivation than others to keep things interesting so I would sew fun curtains or table covers for the room where we contained most of the chaos. Those fabrics found their way into my stash after all these years, and I knew the kids remembered them. How fun would it be to use them for something special for each of them?




Simple Construction & No Batting

Technically these are not quilts because there are not 3 layers, but stick with me. 

Along with the wild prints I had a yards and yards of 60" velour I had bought with the intention to make the older kids Harry Potter capes. I was not at all sure I could use it for backing in the beginning, but let me tell you now, YES! It was a winner. 

I matched the woven yardage on the large pieces of velour, pinned first, cut leaving the velour with an extra 1/2" because it curls a bit, and sewed right sides together leaving about 6" open to turn right sides out. Once turned and smoothed, I machine stitched the gap shut. 



I loaded the piece on the longarm, and stitched great big dinosaur teeth across the quilt to hold the layers together. I opted not to add batting to any as the velour added both warmth and weight. I pulled the first dog quilt off, and wrapped it around me as I sat down to figure out what my plan was, and it was quite luxurious for a human so I knew the dogs would love it too. 



The designs were kept big. Just enough quilting to hold everything together, and make these all a cinch to launder. 




When I ran out of novelty fabrics, I turned to some other harder to use prints I have had a while. By this time, I was matching prints to each dog's personality. This one would be Fiona's. She's very much a lady.



And this one for India who prefers to be called Tooncies. 

Back to the batting issue for just a minute. If you do use batting for quilts intended for pets, stick to cotton or cotton blend batting. While anything can become a choking hazard if your pet chews it, polyester seems to be worse as it stays puffy. 

Make everything very washable and dryer safe, and be realistic that one miniature dachshund will chew tiny little holes all over hers no matter how much you tell her not to. She will love it that much.

Each one of these took about 45 minutes from start to finish, and used up a good stack of oddball fabric. Now I have to wait until Christmas Eve to see the joy on their little faces! I think the Christmas spirit has finally struck.

Come on, Doxie girls.
Let's go sew.

Linking up with~



7 comments:

Angie in SoCal said...

How cool is that! and quite a bit of stash used. Very clever, Julie. Thanks for the process post.

piecefulwendy said...

What a great way to reuse fabric, especially some that will have fun memories for your family. I well realize what you meant by your home being taken over by homeschooling studies, since we homeschooled too. It will be fun for you to hear the memories from your kids, while the dogs rest (or nibble) on their new beds!

Jenny said...

I love that idea, gifts for the doggies! Thats quite a handfull, With 11 dogs in the family. Bet they are all spoilt rotten too!

Anja @ Anja Quilts said...

Oh my gosh...what an awesome idea. I think the kids will like that you used fabrics from their past. I've just used minky on a lap quilt, and I may have to switch for all quilts. It's just so warm and cozy.

Barb Neiwert said...

How fun for the doggies and how fun for you to get that old, unused fabric put to a good use. I made a dog bed once for our dog, and it turned out to be SO DANG BIG! She enjoyed it, but it took up a lot of room in our kitchen, lol. Still loads of fun to see her enjoying it.

Carol- Beads and Birds said...

This is a great idea. My dogs have beds, but I usually put a town on top so I can pick it up and launder it often. Yours are perfect for MY purpose since the towel looks, well, kind of tacky. I have been thinking I'd check out my stash to make just this kind of thing. Thanks for the nudge.
xx, Carol

Tami Von Zalez said...

I like to put a extra loft batting between my dog quilts and then just quilt them in great big rectangles.
Here's mine https://thriftshopcommando.blogspot.com/2017/03/quilt-qwazy-queens-and-quilted-kennel.html