"Sew" productive

When I sew, I try to do several projects and get as much bang for my buck as I can.  My sewing time is limited and I am not exactly the best or most patient sewer but my piggies told me they don't mind my sewing, they will pee on my wonky stitched fleece all the same. 

Here was the products of last weekends sewing session: 

Two ramp liners

Two catwalk liners

One reversible no sew fleece bed

Two tree catwalk liners

These are really neat. I used my Invertible Stuff-able Pillow case liner sewing technique to make these catwalk pads. They have two layers of uhaul padding sewn inside them and are able to be inverted for quicker drying and stuff0able if you need to add more padding or a coroplast panel inside.

Here are several of my past sewing projects:

Where the wild things are tunnels

Free standing Forest fleece fleece forest and hay bag

 Cage liners, corner pads, potty pads

Waterproof bottle pads, patio liners

another Wild thing tunnel

Assorted tunnels, costs, beds, and pads

 Close ups of pad and cosys

Heart shaped bed and storybook tunnel

Chevron waterproof pads

 Brown chevron cage liner and waterproof pads

Guinea TV grid hidey cover

Catwalks!

I still liked the idea of the racetrack upper level but the tubes were getting to be a hack to clean so I thought I'd see how I liked a gridded catwalk instead.  True to it's name my cat had to investigate soon after I installed it:

The piggies seem to prefer the catwalks to the tubes, they are flat, wider and plusher.

I finished switching out the tubes for catwalks last week.  I really like them.  They are super easy to clean (much more budget friendly for anyone who wants to try this in their cage) and although the cage looks like it would be complicated and time consuming to take apart it is incredibly fast!  Both patios, the ramp and one catwalk are all able to come up and out of the cage.  The one catwalk in the back had to be permanent because of the lid but it is very easy to work around.

One small challenge I came across is that my foxy tube liners were too narrow for the much wider catwalks so I quickly sewed up a couple of wider cat walk liner sets.

Piggy cage gets tubular.

I stumbled on a really cool cage using clear acrylic tubes and PVC on the outside of the cage to create a habitrail style racetrack.  As soon as I saw it I got obsessed with the idea of adding one to my cage.  I bought a 6" diameter, 6' acrylic tube from www.usplastics.com and had them cut it into two 3' sections.  After giving it some more thought I realized It would cost less if I didn't put the tubes on the outside of the cage.  I brainstormed a few different ideas and then decide to do a trial run with one tube connecting to a second patio. I wanted to see how difficult it would be to maintain.  

The piggies loved it and it worked well and looked super cool:

It wasn't very long until I decided to complete the racetrack and add the second tube:

 I had it like this for a couple of weeks but soon got tired of cleaning out the tubes. They are big enough to put an arm in, but they get messy on the insides and while it does look super cool and work great, I just didn't feel like I wanted to keep maintaining it.   My next variation on this idea was to swap out the tubes for a set of U bent grid catwalks.  See my next post for photos and details.