Maisie's New Bed

We'll have two stories in the new house, and I've been thinking Maisie will need a comfortable place to hang out downstairs if I want to uphold my no-dogs-on-the-couch rule. So I made her a new bed - entirely out of old materials.

It was quite a satisfying project. The outside is made from scraps of fleece from an overflowing bin that's been in my closet since 2001. An outfit in Ely, MN used to give away bags of fleece bits left over from making jackets and things, and I ended up with a whole collection after my year at Wolf Ridge. It took a while to sew all the squares and strips together, but the result is colorful and fun. The bottom is padded with several layers of old mattress pads and a few pieces of denim from old holey jeans.

And - the crowning touch - the bumper around the edge is stuffed with a gazillion tiny scraps of quilt fabric and yarn and old socks and underwear and whatnot. I'd been saving all these odds and ends to recycle, but had no luck finding somewhere to take them. So Mom provided me with an old pair of panty hose, and I stuffed each leg full and sewed them together, then threaded this unwieldy snake through the fleece tube and sewed it onto the base.

As you can see, Maisie is a fan. In fact, she wanted to lie in it long before it was finished, so every time I'd set it out on the floor to work on it, she'd manage to get right in. Goofy girl!