DIY Pet Beds for Your Doll's Dog or Cat

       Covering doll furniture with cotton and fabric is not as difficult as it looks. However, it does take a bit of practice and patience! After awhile you will get used to the process and improve greatly as you go. Start with something simple, like a tiny bed for Barbie's pets.

Barbie and Ken have many pets, so they need to have pet beds for both
dogs and cats.

These little cats sleep in the utility room so we've trimmed
out their bedding with yellow calico to match the decor of
the doll's utility room.

Supply List:

• Calico scraps and matching felt colors
• cardboard
• hot glue and hot glue gun
• needle and thread
• oval sponge (one cut in half or two separate)
• masking tape
• four beads of equal size for each bed

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. Purchase your round sponge first before cutting or measuring any of the materials for this project. I cut my sponge in half to make two beds. However, you may decide to use two separate sponges for each bed instead. Cutting a sponge in half is not very easy to do. 
2. Choose your pet's bed fabric to coordinate with other furnishings inside in your doll's house if you like. 
3. Place your sponge on top of a piece of cardboard and draw around the circumference of it. Now you can cut this oval shape out to use as both a pattern and a part of your pet's bed.
4. To fashion the sides of the pet bed, cut a one inch strip of cardboard out and round off the corners a bit.
5. Now tape and paste this strip to the outside edge of the cardboard base to form the side. Let this dry. Make sure to leave a space around one half of the pet's bed without a side. This will make the bed easy to get in and out of. (shown just right)
6. Set your sponge onto the wrong side (A sewing term that means backside.) of the calico you have selected. Draw with a pencil around the edge of the sponge on top of the fabric. Now draw a second line approximately 2 inches away from this shape. You need to cut your fabric just a little bit larger than the actual sponge so that you can wrap the fabric and tape it in place over the top half of the sponge.
7. Don't worry about wrapping your pieces to look clean where you will be putting hot glue anyway. 
8. Now, wrap the cardboard pet bed in the same way, taping down the left over corners down to the inside interior of the bed. (see photo below)
9. Hot glue the covered sponge into the covered pet bed frame. 
10. Hot glue a oval piece of felt to the bottom of your pet's bed. (see photo below)
11. Hot glue on four beads for feet. (see photo below)
12. Sew seams down around the bed's wrapped edges if necessary.

Right, see how messy the inside of this bed looks! But, I'm going to hot glue the covered sponge over this, so it's o.k.
if it's a bit messy! Center, I have hot glued the matching felt to the bottom of each pet bed and this covers up the tape
used to wrap the bottom edges with fabric. Then I glued four beads on the bottom to act as 'legs' for the pet beds.
Right, my finished projects. I used a needle and thread to sew the seams down as well.

The doll's dog sleeps in the blue and green bedroom so we've selected a coordinating calico print to trim out his bed.
The dog is made from chenille stems. You can learn how to make one similar to mine by visiting Art Education Daily.