It's Pet Week! ~ For Small Animals: Hammock

I hope you enjoyed my earlier rat coat tutorial ;) Here's something a bit more useful! Our rats love their hammocks, and so do mice, ferrets and probably lots of other small animals!

You can use the same principles to make a taggie blanket for little kids!

What you need:

* Two squares of fabric (I prefer fleeces and flannels)

* Four short strips of one of the fabrics, or four strips of ribbon

What to do:

Take your top square of fabric. Fold one of your ribbons or fabric strips in half, and pin it so that the open end is facing the edge of the fabric. Repeat with the other ribbons/fabric strips, placing one at each corner of the fabric square.

Pin your backing fabric to this, right sides facing in.

Sew around the edges of your pinned fabric pieces, being sure to catch the ribbon ends in your sewn edge.

Trim the fabric at the corners at a right-angle, so that you get a nice neat corner when you fold the fabric right-side out.

Turn the hammock right side out.

Fold the edges of the open area in:

Then top stitch around the entire thing, closing this hole in the process.

You're done! Time for a road test!

Hang your new hammock using show curtain rings or S-hooks :)

Hazel and Honeysuckle, namesakes of this blog,
will road test for us today!

Looks pretty good so far!

Piff wants in too!

They seem pretty happy! I think it passes the test! :D

It's Pet Week! ~ For Rats: St Patrick's Day Novelty Coat

When I asked my man for ideas of what to do this week, he said he wanted me to make coats for our pet rats! 

Heh. Hehehehe.

I've got to keep him happy, right? 

So today you get a 2-for-1 deal! I figure I'll do a silly little tute for these coats, but in a few hours I'll also show you an easy hammock for your small animals! Rats, mice and ferrets absolutely LOVE hammocks and I'm sure there's other animals that would too!

So, tutorial #1 - novelty rat coats!

You will need:

* Two small rounded rectangles of fabric

* Two small strips of elastic

* Any embellishments you feel the need to add ;)

We're rockin' the GREEN because it's St Patrick's Day!!

What to do:

OK, well this first step is what I *tried* to do - measure the rat!!

The blurriness gives you an idea of how much Hammie did NOT want to hold still! 

So, rat measuring is OUT!

Eyeballing it is IN!

Take the rounded rectangle that you're using for the top of your coat, and pin your elastic as shown in the picture below:

The top bit of elastic is to go around the neck, the middle bit around the belly.

Pin the rounded rectangle of fabric that you're using for the underside of the coat onto the first piece, right sides facing together.

Stitch around the outside, leaving an opening at one end so we can turn it right-side out again in a second. You can even double back over the ends of elastic to make them more secure.

When you turn it right-sides out, it should look kinda like this! 

See the open end in each pic?

Fold the edges of the open hole inside:

Then top stitch across the opening and all around the edges.

Trim any loose threads, then if you want, add a bow-tie ;)

And dress up your model! Introducing the handsome Huckleberry:

Lookin' goooood! Very "St Patrick's Day", right??

Warning! Don't leave your pets in these unattended. The coats are for fun and photo taking only. It's too easy for your pet to get stuck in it awkwardly, it could even hurt itself!

See how awkward things can get?

Oh noes! My hands are caught!

If you're not careful, you can even turn into a turtle!!

(OK, OK, I promise the next post will be more sensible!)