Guinea Pig Tunnels

I'm wrapping up my backlog of guinea pig sewing projects.  The half-written instructions have been nagging me for months.  I couldn't post them until I had a good set of photos that matched the instructions.  Today's finished project:  tunnels.

I experimented with boning-free tunnels earlier this year.  My first two attempts had their quirks, but I liked the design.  I adjusted the size (and wrote down the measurements!) for this tunnel.  It's a little shorter and a bit wider than the tunnel Cannoli modeled in the previous post.

This tunnel was made from two pieces of fabric: a piece of cotton 18x19" and fleece 19.5x18" [1].

Fold the cotton cloth, right sides together along the 18" sides.  Repeat with the fleece, matching the 19.5" sides.  Sew up the 19.5" side of fleece and the 18" side of the cotton with 3/8" seams.

Turn cotton piece right side out and slide fleece into cotton sleeve [2].  The fleece should hang out evenly from both ends of the cotton fabric.  Fold the excess flap of fleece back over the cotton ends and pin.  When both ends are pinned, carefully turn the tunnel inside out [3].  (Those pins are sharp!)  I find it's easier to stitch from the inside of an opening than the outside.  Stitch around the opening close to the cut edge of the fleece.  Repeat on the other end.

Turn the tunnel cotton-side out, and roll back the ends 2-3 times.

There's plenty of room for a 1kg guinea pig but two pigs in there could be squishy.  The pattern can modified to suit:  longer, shorter, wider (I probably wouldn't go much narrower).  The width of the fleece (what's used for the circumference) should be about 1" shorter than the cotton fabric.  I find that the fleece tends to stretch over time, especially if it was cut along stretchy grain of the fleece.  Be sure to cut the fleece is about 1.5" longer than the cotton for the length of the tunnel so there's enough fleece to fold over and stitch down on the ends.