Dog Cave Beds (old project)

My husband suggested that I put this project on here because he likes it so much.  This is a dog bed that has a cover on top making it possible for the dog to snuggle down under the covers.  The base/filling is two regular pillows that are easily removed, making it easy to clean the cover and change out the pillows when they get old. 

I made the first one for our first dog (Sally Jo) and she wasn't so interested in the snuggling, but our second dog (Hank) absolutely loves it and snuggles all the time.  I made a second one for him ~2 years ago and then my husband volunteered me to make two more for my in-laws two boston terriers.  I don't have a pattern per se, but will give my general directions.  This would be a lot easier with instructional pictures, but hopefully you can get the gist.

I started by buying a microfiber blanket, such as this. 

I cut two rectangles that were the same size as two pillows (I used king pillows for the first one, but given our dogs' sizes I just used regular ones for the others).  I then cut a third in the shape of a isosceles trapezoid with the short side being the same length as the short side of the other two rectangles and I varied the width of the long-side depending on the fatness of the dog.  I think it was ~16-24 inches longer on the long side.  The length of the edge of the trapezoid needs to be ~3-4 inches shorter than the length of the rectangle to create a little bit of an opening on the bed.  I put the long-side of the trapezoid on the edge of the blanket so that I wouldn't have to hem it and it would still have a pretty look.  If you used fabric you could hem it yourself.  Here's what the shapes basically looked like and these are the rough dimensions for the tan bed pictured below (hopefully this makes the measurements make sense):



Now it gets a little more difficult to explain...I then put the right-side of the trapezoid together with the wrong-side of one of the rectangles and pinned the short edge of the trapezoid to the short edge of the rectangle and then pinned the edges of the trapezoid along the long sides of the rectangle (there should be ~3-4 inches left at the end of the rectangle when all was said and done).  I then sewed around the edge leaving ~1/2 inch hem and then turned it right-side out and have the top side of the bed.

At this point I treat the top side of the bed as if it's a single sheet of fabric in the shape of the rectangle (perhaps a more experienced sewer has a better way to do this, but this is how I did it).  It might not make sense until you're doing it, but I try to sew a little above my previous hem to make it look prettier, but I'm not always that good at it (it's a dog bed, so I try not to stress too much about it and the hem is pretty well-hidden given the fabric of the blanket). 

I then sewed a 24 inch zipper at the bottom of the bed (short side of rectangles without the opening) and sewed the rest of this short side of the rectangle together.  I muddled through this, but this tutorial looks pretty good and there are probably a lot more on pinterest.

Once the zipper is sewed on I opened the zipper and then pinned the two rectangles together with right sides facing (it's important to make sure that the hood part of the top of the blanket is in the center of this so that you don't accidentally sew it down when you're hemming).  I then hemmed around the edges with a ~1/2 inch seam.  Once this was done I turned the bed right-side out through the zipper and it's done.  I put two cheap pillows (less than 10 bucks for two of them...my dogs like the firm/fluffy ones) inside and zip it up.

Here's a picture of the finished bed with the dog sitting on top of it whose rough dimensions I used above (you can see that the cover portion of this is quite generous with the extra 20 inches):

Here are pictures of Hank snuggling in the both the beds (he's pretty much taken over both):

(he's the lump under there)