Make It: Up-cycled Dog Blanket

Last week, I took a break from the burlap to sew a new blanket for our upcoming new addition. If you've been reading for a few months, you may know that my husband and I will be welcoming a  brand new puppy into our home in three weeks. We're incredibly excited (and nervous, of course), and we're slowly gathering dog items to prepare for it. I've been hearing that puppies love to snuggle and make a "nest" or "cave" in their sleep area when they are initially adjusting from being away from their mother and siblings.  Since I know puppies can also be quite messy and destructive, I decided to create a blanket from an old-repurposed bath towel and some store-bought faux sherpa fabric.

This project was a win-win as it was less than an hour and required very little supplies. Sometimes we all need those quick projects, right? I'm here to share a very quick tutorial about how I created my puppy's blanket. If you're also interested in making a dog bed, visit our earlier post here for the sewing DIY I put together on how to sew a large dog pillow bed.

Let's jump into how to make one of these dog blankets!

Supplies:

• thread
• scissors
• an old bath towel
• thick fleece or sherpa like fabric the same size as your bathroom towel
• pins
• needle
• sewing machine and standard foot

Instructions

1. Take your fleece or sherpa fabric and lay it on the floor open with the right side facing you (if it's fleece, either side will be fine).

2. Next, lay the old bathroom towel on top of the fabric completely. If you prefer to use one side of the towel over the other, make sure the side you'd like to be showing on the blanket is facing down on top of the fleece fabric.

3. Using scissors, cut the fleece fabric by following the outline of the towel. You will end up with a big rectangle piece of fabric.

4. With the pins, pin the towel and the fabric together about every three inches on three sides. Leave the fourth (short) side open. You will need to flip the fabric inside out after stitching.

5. Using your sewing machine and selected thread, stitch around three sides of the piece of fabric and towel, removing pins as you go. You may need to help keep the towel and fabric straight and aligned together as you feed it through the machine. Where there is a lot of bulk, sew slowly or use the hand wheel on your machine to slowly guide the needle through the bulky fabric.

6. When all three sides are sewn, flip the rectangle inside out, just like a big pillow case. Your corner will look like the corner below.

7. Turn the fabric into the inside and the towel edge into the inside on the final fourth short side of the rectangle. Pin as you go. You are closing the final edge of the blanket by turning in the raw edges to make a nice seam on the end.

8. Using the sewing machine, sew the final fourth side using a straight stitch. Remove the pins as you go and carefully guide the fabric under the pressure foot to make sure both the fleece and the towel are being caught by the needle.

9. (Optional) Lastly, after the fourth side is sewn closed, cut about a yard of thread and thread a hand-sewing needle with a knot at the end. Sew small stitches with knots throughout the blanket to keep the fleece and towel together in the middle of the rectangle. I choose to make six knots (you'll see the black knots in the photo) to keep the pieces of fabric together.

This is another quick DIY sewing project for an extra hour of time. What I loved the most is that I was able to use up the extra sherpa fabric I had on hand from the dog bed I made in January and repurpose an old bath towel. If the puppy destroys the blanket, I won't feel like I had wasted supplies and effort to create something from scratch.

Enjoy!

Erica