{31 Days} Doggie Car Hammock

Day 4: Doggie Car Hammock

David and I had the opportunity to do a little road-tripping this summer and we decided to bring our little pooch along with us! Anyone with a lab knows they have a lot of hair and that hair gets EVERYWHERE! To try and keep the dog hair situation under control, I made a doggie car hammock to drape over the back seat!

Dog car seat covers can cost quite a bit if we were to have bought one from the store. I knew I could make one for a better price and the color would be prettier too! : )  I found a great tutorial on pinterest that I used as a guide. For this project, I used:

3 yards of upholstery weight cotton fabric
3 yards of fleece fabric
3 yards of cotton strapping
sewing machine/thread/pins
patience! (I got a "new" old sewing machine and had a heck of a time figuring it out!)

I first started by measuring the back seat of my car (length and width). I chose to use three yards of fabric for the length of the hammock. It is extra long and reaches down to the floorboard. I could have probably been safe with only two yards but my thinking at the time was that if I made it longer it would also work in our Jeep. Now- I don't think we could. I simply used the width of the fleece fabric to determine how wide the hammock would be.

When I got home with the fabric, I washed and dried the cotton fabric and strapping to prevent shrinkage once it was sewn and washed. Then I laid the fabric out on the floor- cotton fabric face down and then the fleece centered on top, pretty side up. Leave at least a 2" border of cotton around the fleece fabric. I then folded the cotton fabric in 1" inch and then folded again 1". This made a 1" double thick border (the "binding") around the fleece fabric. I then pinned everything in place.

This was the trickiest part trying to get everything to line up straight. At the corners, the tutorial said to make a "quilting corner". I had no idea how to do that but this is how mine ended up looking after I pinned. (Probably not correct- but it worked for me!!)

After all sides and corners were pinned and ready to go, I got the "ok" from Quality Control and then headed back to my sewing table!

 

The tutorial said to sew a 1/4" seam around the binding. I did that but maybe didn't sew completely straight so to ensure that the fleece was secure in the binding I went around a second time about 1/4" from the opposite edge of the binding. 

The next step is to find the placement and length for the headrest straps. I made the two straps that wrap around the backseat headrests long enough to slip completely over the headrest. For the front two straps, I made them pretty short so the hammock stayed tight between the two front seats. So for these two, I have to remove the headrests to put the hammock in place. Once I found the correct length, I pinned each strap.

 

 I sewed the straps on from the back. To make sure the straps were secure I sewed in a zig-zag stitch down the left side, reversed stitched back up, and then reversed again back down- across, reverse, across on the bottom and up, reverse, up on the right side. I decided to forgo the buckles on the straps (from the tutorial) because I thought that would be the first thing to break with my wild man pulling and tugging all over hammock. 

Berkley did great on our trips. This hammock got quite a bit of use with us being on the road for four weekends in a row! And I'm sure it will get a lot of use in the future! 

"Are we there yet?"

4 Down! 27 to go!!