Sunday, January 17, 2010

Guinea Pig Crafting

Have I introduced you to the two newest members of our family? Meet Chancellor and Gordon, two Peruvian guinea pigs with a lot of hair and a lot of style!



Despite what the above photo would have you believe, they spend their days on a bed of fleece -- it wicks moisture right through to an absorbent layer beneath, which heretofore has been a towel, but as of today they sleep and play on a mama-made Guinea Pig Mattress. Cuddly fleece on top, absorbent diaper soaker fabric inside and waterproof barrier on the bottom. Nothing but the best for my boys!

I had seen instructions for making this sort of thing in other places online, but none of them seemed to fit my style -- either too much sewing was involved or the directions were too complicated or something -- so I set out to make a fleece mattress that was simpler in design and even simpler to construct. The result pleased me so much that I made another one and wrote a tutorial for it, and here it is for you to use:

Guinea Pig Fleece Mattress Tutorial (PDF)

I invite you to try it out, let me know what worked and what didn't work and what needs improvement, what changes you made and how your piggies liked it. I hope you're as happy with your results as I was with mine!




(For those of you who are not cavy-crazy, if you'd care to read the tutorial and offer constructive criticism, I'd be grateful for that, too.)

8 comments:

  1. Your piggies look very pleased and satisfied with their new mattress. I wish I had done this when I had pigs at school -- much tidier and easier to clean.

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  2. Thanks for the detailed instructions. I am using cloth diapers as my aborbent layer. I seem to be cleaning my cage every 3-4 days. Maybe if I use Zorb it will be better for my nose.

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  3. Do you think you might be able to make a couple for a 3x6 and chip to Canada if I payed? I LOVE the matress and it would make life so much easyer, but have CP and am useless in the sewing department. :)

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  4. I would certainly consider it -- why don't you email me and we'll talk about it?

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  5. I am doing something wrong. Can't get the PDF to open. Got my fleece today, it's washing and was going to come up with my own patterns, but would rather follow a tutorial of someone who's been there done that. Where did you get your Zorb? Did you have to do anything to prepare it before sewing?

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  6. Hm. I can't seem to get it to work either. Let me fiddle around a bit and get back to you.

    As to the Zorb, I got it at http://www.wazoodle.com/cgi-bin/catstore.cgi?user_action=list&category=Fabrics;Zorb. Sometimes they are out of it and you have to wait a week or so for them to get it back in stock, and I find that it takes them a while to get it to me after I place my order, so be patient and do follow up with them if you think it's taking too long for your order to arrive!

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  7. Addressing the PDF problem -- I will post this in my main blog, but -- according to my husband, who is a software engineer at Google, this seems to be a glitch in the latest version of the Adobe software. What you can do is click on the PDF link, let it load, and then *resize* your browser window a little bit -- this should allow the PDF to appear. Don't ask me why, but it works. Needless to say, I will be contacting Adobe!

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  8. I am also having issues with this. I make cuddle cups (and sell them) I've had lots of people begging for cage liners so I am looking into it. If your PDF works later on for me I might use the idea with a few others I found to make a line but for right now I would just like to make my pigs a liner or two.

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