Cuddle Cup

New pets give me the perfect excuse to try things out. I'm still getting used to this whole guinea pig mama thing. He loves to snuggle, but he always wedges himself in a corner or under cushions. I found this great tutorial for something called a "cuddle cup."

This is actually my first time working with batting and it was sheer hell. I do not like it, Sam-I-Am!! But Hari loves his new cuddle cup, so I suppose all's well that ends well! Here's my attempt.

First, find a bowl in which your guinea pig will fit. The tutorial I linked suggests an 11" diameter circle, but that was far too small for an adult Texel. I wound up using an old chip bowl from Target.

Using that as a template, I cut two circles of fleece. Luckily, batting sticks to fleece like glue, so I slapped a square on one of the fleece circles and trimmed.

 Do not let your guinea pig or cat run off with the circles.

Then, I measured the circumference of the rim of the bowl. This measurement became the length of the wall of the cup. The wall has the same layers as the circular base (2 fleece, 1 batting). I used slightly higher walls for my slightly larger boy, so my wall pieces were 33.5" x 8". I used the chip bowl to create a shorter portion of the wall, so it is easier to climb into the cup.

Assembling the parts is a little bit tricky. First, pick one "wall" fleece and one "base" fleece. Fold the wall in half with the right side in. Sew the loose ends together to make a continuous loop.

 

Pin the base to the bottom of the wall, keeping right sides together. Be meticulous with this step, or else the pieces will not match well once you're sewing! Once the base is pinned, sew it on, creating the outer shell of the cup, like so:

Do not flip it inside out it! It needs to remain inverted when you assemble the inner and outer shells. That will happen at the very end! If you're wanting to play on the safe side, tack your batting to your remaining fleece pieces. Then, repeat the process used to form the outer shell of the cup, but keep the batting on the wrong side. I found sewing all that material to be very slow going, but this was my first time working with so many layers!

The fun part: Stack the inner shell inside of the inverted outer shell. I pinned the wall at the middle of the lowest portion, and on either side of the low portion, where it swoops back up to meet the height of the rest of the wall. After pinning, it slumped over on itself. Since this is supposed to stand on its own, I went ahead and trimmed about 1.5" off the top, making my wall height closer to 6.5". Sew around the top of the cup, leaving a gap somewhere to pull the right side of the outer shell out. This will effectively "revert" the inverted cup. Almost done!

For the gap that's left over, just do a quick blind stitch. Take some time to align the seams and form the cup into its final upright state. If you have cats, do not let them see the final result, because they will become jealous and attempt to steal it.

Introduce your guinea pig and enjoy! Hari loves his. He even figured out how to flip it over and make a cave. He's a happy piggy.