An Oldie, but a Goodie (the Fish Cat Bed

I ran across these pictures of my kitty Joe (who passed away in July 2007) and his fishy bed that I made him many years ago—that, of course, all the current kitties just ignore. But Joe Kitty LOVED his fishy bed, so I thought I would post about it.

The pattern was on sale. And I am insane.
Those were the two main forces driving the making of the Fishy Bed for my cat. This project ended up being one of the most horrifying things I have ever taken on. I even sewed through my finger at one point and still have the scar.

Here is Joe Kitty, satisfied with the end result.



The Materials:
Pattern = Simplicity 9004.
Outside fabrics = various cotton prints.
Lining and lips = snuggly blue fleece.
Polyester foam sheets give it the shape.
Eyes = ping pong balls cut in half and a sharpie marker
A little bit of catnip sprinkled in throughout!

The Process:
I used a walking foot and tear away paper when feeding through the machine. This project would have been much easier with a Teflon foot (which I now have!) because the foot really wanted to grab on to the foam...but, live and learn.

About halfway through the project, I became too angry with my machine to keep using it (this was before I upgraded to my current fancypants machine), and ended up sewing a lot of the seams by hand, especially those where four layers of foam plus four layers of fabric all smooshed together. With a project this small, it worked out ok.

Although I hated this project while it was in process, the end result was so cute (and well loved!) that I can’t regret doing it.

Plus it gave me a lot of gumption to take on new things afterwards. “Zoot suits, wedding dresses, groom suit, hats? No problem, can’t be worse than the cat bed.”