Dressed Up Dog Crate

As you saw in this post, I decided to make Sweet Olive a crate cover to help this wiry, jail-like contraption look a little more homey. The idea of dogs sleeping in crates has never sounded very nice to me, but Olive genuinely loves hers and voluntarily goes in it each night when it's time for bed. We leave the door open and sometimes she takes a lap or two around the bedroom, but mainly she snoozes in there until we wake up in the morning.

I found some DIY crate covers which I pinned to my Pooch-themed board  to give me a jumping off point.

With Harley's crate cover, I liked that it was a neutral color and had some detail on the top.

What I liked with the blue and white one was that it came around onto the front of the crate and sort of framed the door.

Before I could make a cover, though, we had to get a crate. Because we were putting it in a corner, we needed one that had a "garage door" style opening, rather than a swinging door since there was nowhere for the door to swing. We found the right size on Amazon for $37, which was nearly half the price we would have paid at PetSmart. 

Olive's foster mom suggested putting a towel or a yoga mat under the crate to help protect our carpet from the wires. I went with a yoga mat since it's waterproof (not to mention my yoga stint was short lived, so this guy was sitting around unused), to be an extra layer of protection in case of any future accidents (we haven't had any yet... knock on wood we never do). I trimmed the sides so there wouldn't be tons of excess lime green sticking out, but I opted to leave it nice and long to protect the wall--again, in case of any upset doggy tummies. You can never be too careful, and my dad has a story that's too horrifying to share with you that confirms that walls sometimes need to be protected.

To figure out how much fabric I would need, I measured each of the 4 sides of the crate I would be covering and sketched them onto an index card, adding about 1" to each measurement to allow for hemming. Once I got to Joann's and found the fabric I was going to use, I sketched all of the pieces together like a puzzle, making sure to fit them within the width of the fabric. I find that it's best to wait to do this until after you've found your fabric of choice, since they come in different widths. Granted, there are only a few standard widths, but this progression is just what's easiest for me.

First thing's first: wash the fabric, and make sure to hem the edges first so it doesn't become an unraveled ball of string in the washer. This first step is one that I always struggle with... because I'm impatient like that... and impatience often wins. Not this time though, because the last thing I wanted was to sew this crate cover, wash it a few months later, and have it shrink by an inch and no longer fit.

Please excuse the crazy white balance/general laziness exhibited in these pictures. Taking quality pictures required more energy than I had that day :)

Rather than cutting panels for each side of the crate (which would have meant hemming each of the four sides twice), I figured it would be easier to drape the whole piece of fabric over the crate and pin the edges to create a seam, then turn it right-side-out to hide the seams.

I chose a fabric that would more or less blend in will the walls, and it nearly perfectly matches our
bedsheets. It's clear that I intentionally didn't make the bed,
just so you could see the comparison... right?

After everything was lined up, I started pinning.

After I had four edges pinned, I thought it would be best to go ahead and get them sewn so I could see if any adjustments needed to be made before I got too far in. Also, pins make me somewhat nervous and I had no idea how to navigate sewing around this many of them, much less any more of them.

Here we are with those four edges sewn, plus a few more. You'll notice in the picture below that there's a slit going down the right side, which was to create a sort of panel that I could roll up like a window so that Sweet Olive could see us sitting in bed while she was in her crate. I wanted to do this because when we first adopted her, she became very nervous when she couldn't see where we were. Luckily, she grew out of this insecurity a few days after I made this cover.

I say luckily for two reasons. The first being that growing out of insecurities is a good thing. The second, well... can you see it? Have you spotted what I did wrong?

Womp womp. I put the slit on the right side of the crate, which is where it needs to be when the crate cover is complete. I failed to think about the fact that when I turned the cover right-side-out, the "window" would switch over to the left side, giving her a lovely view of... the wall.

It was not until I had done all of the work to create this lovely little window for her that I realized my error. John received some very angry texts about how I had spent hours and hours making Olive a cover and it was ruined! RUINED!!!!!

I decided to finish everything up anyway (even thought it was RUINED!!!!!), and ended up using a zig-zag stitch to secure the window panel to the sides. To add some detail, I tried to mimic the first inspiration picture I showed you by adding some ruffles. I'm not usually one for ruffles (they feel too girly to me), but I liked that they softened the cover and kept it from being just a giant cube of fabric. I had no real technique to adding them... I just bunched the fabric up and sewed it down. 

And, voila! The ruffles came out much more... ruffly... than I had expected (they feel sort of domineering and messy to me), but I was too defeated from the whole window panel failure to do anything about it. Looking back, I think I spaced the ruffles too close together and should have made each one about twice as wide.

For the record, the dark spot in the back left corner is the tag for that sheet.

Above, you can see the yoga mat lining the back of the crate. The cover also encloses the back, but I put the yoga mat between the crate and the cover so that the portion of the mat that sits on top of the crate would be hidden by the cover, rather than visible.

Now that we've lived with it for a few weeks, I don't miss the panel at all, and Olive seems quite happy in there. As for the ruffles, oh well. I've gotten used to them and think it would be too much work to rip all of those seams & re-attach them, just to make them slightly less in-yo-face.

So, what do you think? Have any of you made a crate cover before? How did yours turn out? Also, can this be the last time I ever use the word "crate"? We prefer to call it her bed, which seems less jail-like :)

Put A Bow On It

John and I have been wanting to get a pooch for some time now, but with so much transition in the past two years (between getting engaged, graduating, buying a house, getting married, moving into our house, and changing professions), I've been hesitant to add yet another thing to the list of "what's new this week."

Now that we're all settled in and things are feeling familiar and comfortable, we've started the search. We think we've found the perfect pooch, but we won't officially adopt her until after we're back from our honeymoon later this month. In the name of not jinxing anything, I'll hold off on the details until things are official, but don't worry--I'll do a full post about our little lady as soon as it's a done deal. I can already tell that I'm going to be one of those obnoxious dog owners that post about their pooch all the time, because I already have a phone full of pictures of her.

One thing I wanted to do for our little lady is to make her some bows for her collar. I found some inspiration on Pinterest (like here and here) and decided to give it a go. The thing I had to think about most was how to fasten the bow to the collar. I considered magnets, velcro, clip-on earring backers, pins, and making the bow a permanent part of the collar itself. In the end, I went with pins.

There are no-sew versions of this project out there, but I opted to go for the sewn version because I thought it would hold up a little better (not to mention that the sewing is very basic).

For these bows, you'll need:

• 8"x13" piece of fabric
• Thread
• Pins
• Scissors
• Needles
• Tape measure

First, I ironed my fabric to get all of the wrinkles out.

Then, I folded over 1" on each edge and ironed the crease.

I did this on all four sides.

Then, I folded in the two longest sides to the center.

I folded the short sides inward on the corners.

Then, folded it to the center.

To make the bow shape, I scrunched up the center and ran the needle through. I went back and forth a few times, then tied it off.

Next, I cut and ironed a small rectangle to operate as the band in the center of the bow.

After wrapping it around, I sewed the band together.

Lastly, I put the sharp side of the pin flat on the bow and sewed it down. I considered hot-glueing it, but I was worried it wouldn't adhere to the fabric well (especially since it has a slick metallic coating where the chevrons are). To do this, I went through the fabric under the pin, came up on the other side, wrapped the thread around the point, then stuck the needle through the fabric on the opposite side and repeated. It feels pretty secure, and I'm not planning to remove the bows everyday, so it should hold up just fine.

Et voila!

I did the yellow and cream colored bows without ironing any edges, and I think between that and the fabric being a little thicker, the they came out looking softer. For our pooch, soft is what I'm going for, so I bet I'll end up using those two more than the blue one. Plus, I didn't end up loving that blue chevron fabric as much as I thought I would.

What other DIY projects do you know of for dogs? I think making a crate cover is next on my list.

We're off to Kauai tomorrow for our much overdue honeymoon, but when we get back I hope to have a post on our trip as well as our new pooch!

Elongated Panels

You may have noticed a little change from my accessorized post...

To my before & after post...

Curtains! What a difference they make. I initially figured that hanging these curtains would be as easy as it's always been before... and boy was I wrong. As you can see above, our bedroom has a normal window with a smaller window on top. I knew I wanted to cover both of them with curtains, because my stupid eyes have pretty severe over reactions to light in the morning. Well, in the morning as well as always, but particularly in the morning. Specifically, once it gets bright out, I have nightmares that I'm going blind, and when I finally wake up I realize it's just because there's sunshine coming in the window. Thus, the need to cover both windows. That, or think I'm going blind every morning.

So, in order to cover both, I needed to find curtains that were 108" long. Curtains are made in that length, but 84" and 96" are much more common. I couldn't find any I liked, except for a few from West Elm and Anthro that were around $100 per panel. What am I, rich? That would be over a thousand dollars if I wanted to put curtains on all of the windows in the house. I of course also considered making my own, but I couldn't find any fabric I liked either. Womp Womp.

Alas, I came up with a solution. It wasn't as quick as that sentence makes it sound... I seriously agonized over this for weeks. First step of problem solving... hang the curtain rod.

Second step: hang Target curtains. These curtains were almost perfect for a couple of reasons. First, the room was feeling really masculine and cold between the colors and the stripes on the duvet, so the pattern helped soften things up. Second, the color was perfect. I wanted something yellow to brighten things up, but it had to be a very slightly mustardy yellow because the yellow on the duvet isn't a pure, bright yellow, and these happened to be the perfect color. Third, they had grommets, which meant they would slide easily on the curtain rod which was important because it's waaay up there. What kept them from being perfect? They were only 84".

Solution: add a panel on the bottom. I used my seam ripper to take out the bottom seam so I could attach the second panel.

I used some white curtains from Target that were the same type of fabric and just pinned them to the bottom of the yellow ones.

Then I sewed them on and sewed hems on the white ones to make the edges match up.

And ta da! 

Now, did you notice in the picture above that a second curtain rod snuck up there? Because the thing is, having those pretty yellow curtains wasn't going to block enough light, so I got some "blackout" curtains to help them out. These curtains aren't actually blackout because they still let light in (I used to have true blackout ones that had a thin coat of plastic on the back to make them opaque), but they block the majority of it.  

I initially planned on hiding the blackout ones behind the yellow ones during the day, but I actually like how they look peeking out from the middle. They look intentionally layered... as if that was my plan all along. Wait, wasn't it? 

I'm really pleased with how they turned out, even if it was an excruciating process. This post may not have made it sound all that bad, but it took me a couple of weeks to figure out my plan, and about 15 hours to execute it. Yep, that's a ridiculous amount of time. I can't even talk about all of the specific bumps along the way because it's seriously too traumatic to relive it.

Bonus: I got a pretty solid workout going up and down the ladder once every 5 minutes for 15 hours. I was sore for 3 days.

Another bonus: I think the curtains make the room look way taller and more finished in general.

Last bonus: the vanity was looking really random and out of place before the curtains were hung, and the color looked too warm compared to all of the other furniture. Now that the curtains are up and bring a lot of warmth to that side of the room, I think the vanity fits right in. I don't think I'm going to refinish it afterall, but I am still planning to get new knobs. The current ones are too brassy and traditional and they blend right into the wood.

So, what do you think? You should comment and let me know! I talked to about 80 people at the wedding who said they read the blog... and yet none of you ever leave your thoughts! Is it because you don't make it to the very end? Should I start putting this sentence at the top? Are you just looking at the pictures? Should I make a picture that says comment? Come on, yall!