Upcycled Cozies

I packed up all the guinea pig stuff after Mabel passed away.  When I fostered Bugsy and Pumpkin Spice back in March, I unearthed a bunch of fleece was never getting used again.  Most were fashioned to fit cages I no longer had, others were remnants from other projects.  A waste to toss out, yet all had been pigified (even after having washed them several times).

This pile of fleece sat under my desk for a few months.  I finally got tired of looking it.

Telltale Signs

There are a variety of telltale signs when a guinea pig is in residence.  Granted, there's no hiding a cage or the loud wheeking.  But so many things you don't ever think about shout:  Guinea pigs live here!




Hay.  It's everywhere.  On the floor.  In every. single. room of the house.  On my clothes.  I've even found it in my suitcase once.  How did it get there?!?

Self Cleaning Fleece and Giveaway

Around April Fool's day I often see posts on guinea pig forums about miraculous self-cleaning fleece.  Any guinea pig owner will tell you they are constantly sweeping hay and guinea pig poo out of the cage.  If someone ever invented fleece that could self-clean, they'd be rich!

I don't have magical poo-eating fleece, but the gecko fleece I have is amazing at camouflaging it.  The fleece doesn't hide the hay so much, but overall it looks cleaner than it actually is.  Can you find all the poos in the picture?

How about a contest?

Getting Comfortable

Most guinea pigs excel at being loafy; Boadicea is a master of chill.  We caught her several times over the last two weeks.  This pig seriously knows how to veg.

First Rob caught Boadicea trying to bury herself under the hay.  This was probably her most unsuccessful attempt of getting comfortable.  The bundled hay didn't really allow her to hide under it, which I suspect was her end game.

But later attempts were far more successful. 

Passes Inspection?

I fell in love with this bright blue and green fleece when I purchased fleece for the upper levels.  The light color wasn't good for bedding - it would always look dirty.  However, a half yard needed to come home with me.  After some debate, it became a hammock, a cozy and a fleece forest. 

I haven't made hammocks in ages.  I based this design on a hammock a friend gave the pigs years ago, with some new hooks to try out.  I was pleased by the results but the real test was when I put it in the cage.

What do you think?  That looks to me like the stamp of approval.

I Like Thursday: Spring Cleaning

I had piles of scrap fleece after making new bedding for the guinea pig cage.  Then there's all that fabric I brought home from the Tea.  Heaps all over the sewing room table and chairs.  It needed to go.  I hadn't even finished sewing the label on Confetti when I started cutting fleece.

I like to see scrap fabric become a stack of finished cozies, pig pillows, hay racks and hammocks.  Three different piles of fleece have dwindled to a handful stuffed into a corner of a drawer.  I also got to use some of my quilting stash - fabric I was bored with or that really didn't go with anything else.  So satisfying to use it!

I like the two shopping bags - and finished in time to be handed off on Saturday.  There was very little salmon fabric, so I couldn't do the full swap of bag and handles as I intended.  I kept the blue fabric for handles on the salmon bag since I love the combination.  I dug out my trusty pastel floral print for the blue bag's handles.  Not as stunning, but it works.

I like making mug rugs.  I managed to squeak out four of them from the shopping bag leftovers.  I'll be backing them in the next fabric and binding in the pastel blue.  I hope to have them done by Saturday, too!

New Upper Fleece

geckos and flowers

I recently bought new fleece for the upper levels of Boadicea and Wedgwood's cage.  As usual, they don't match any of the first floor fleeces.  At least they don't clash as much as some combinations.  I'm positive the geckos will be excellent at hiding poo and hay.  The ice blue flowers should blend in with most of the lower level colors.

New fleece is fun, but I am kind of bummed out.  Some of my favorite fleece shrunk or had worn through in spots, even though there was still plenty of nap left.  I retired the teakettles late last year (oh, woe!); I could not quite stretch it over the coroplast to keep it in place.  Today it's the rooster print, which was such a great color.  I've stashed it away as backup (there's barely enough to clip into place), because I'm not ready to part with it.  I bought those back in the day of Pinniped and Bertie.

Modern Sacking

One of the things I love about our new camera is it doesn't need fussing.  The only way I could get my old one to produce good photos was to manually adjust the settings.  I'd miss antics - by the time I got everything right, they'd have moved on.  I'm hoping I'll get more candid pig pics.  (I'm liking the food and quilt pics, too, but we know it's all about the pigs.)

I caught Wedgwood seriously enjoying her cozy.  Ooh - little feet sticking out.  Look at that nose.  The grey, white and yellow caught my eye.  It's a popular color combination in modern quilts.  I can see why people like it.  Such fashion sense, Wedgwood!

Typical Cage Cleaning

Cleaning Boadicea and Wedgwood's cage is pretty straightforward.  Twenty minutes of pulling stuff apart, wiping the cage down, replacing towels and fleece, then reassembling.  And chasing guinea pigs.  No cage cleaning day is complete without herding curious or mischievous pigs.

With the magic of time lapse photography, I seem to do it all in a minute and a half.  It would probably go well with Yakety Sax (especially the pig trains).

I weigh Boadicea and Wedgwood, then let them loose on the floor.  I sweep out most of the loose hay.  Pull out the third and second levels, sweep up and pull out the first floor bedding.  Sweep out the the debris on the coroplast and spray vinegar all over the bottom level.

I pull out my box of clean bedding, pick what I want and change the second level bedding; put the second level back into the cage.  Wipe down the bottom level and a put in a fresh layer of towels.

Chase pigs (because they're hanging out in the living room more than they should be).

Everyone's Favorite

Cage cleaning day!  That's always such a good time.  Boadicea and Wedgwood get weighed, then are let out on the floor.  It doesn't take them long to start exploring the living room, hiding under the couch where they don't belong.  Half my cage cleaning time is spent herding them back into the kitchen.

Then, when the cage is all re-fleeced, it must be thoroughly inspected.  All that running around on the floor and the cage takes a lot of energy.  I end up with two very weary pigs.

The green sack was a popular spot to rest up.  Boadicea claimed it first and was out cold for a while.  Wedgie eventually got her turn; she slept on it for the late afternoon then in it for the evening.

Whew!  Cage cleaning day is a lot of hard work.

Snug as a Bug II

As it has been getting colder, Wedgwood has been spending a lot of time snuggled in the upstairs cozy.  She must have learned the one-leg-out pose from Boadicea.

Leave me alone, Mama, I'm comfy.

What a Jungle

I have written about how badly coordinated the guinea pigs' cage fleece can be.  I've been fleecing the upper decks since 2005;  I started to regularly fleece the bottom of the cage just two years ago.  Of course fabric patterns don't stick around that long, so nothing matches from top to bottom.

Well, a few of the top level pieces have shrunk (fleece shrinks?) too much to fit across the coroplast.  In addition, one of my first attempt at lower level fleeces fell apart.  Pair that with a $2.99 fleece sale at JoAnn's - I had a great excuse to buy new fleece.

Goodness - this means there is one full set of matching fleece for the cage.  Boadicea and Wedgwood are finally styling instead of looking like they got their big sister's hand-me-downs.  The fabric is a bit more eye popping than I realized when I bought it.  The feathers look more like palm fronds and all that blue and green is rather tropical.  It's a jungle in there.

The girls seem happy enough.  Works for me!

Pig Laundry Prep

I recently wrote about using U-Haul pads under fleece for guinea pig cages.  Today I'm writing about how I prepare the fleece for washing.

Many people just shake out the fleece and throw it in the washer.  However, we had a bad experience several years ago with a clogged washing machine.  I'm not sure if guinea pig fur was the culprit, or if it was from years of accumulated lint before us.  Either way, I decided to play it safe and try to get as much hair out of the fleece as possible.  I've used a variety of brushes and sticky tape over the years and have found a few favorites.  My current brushes are wearing out, I am trying a couple of new items as replacements.

My current favorite is the purple glove called the Love Glove.  I bought it on Amazon for around $6.  This one is about a year old, nearly worn smooth.  Not only do I use it for prepping fleece for the wash, it's great for sweeping out the cage every day.  It does a decent job removing hair and pieces of hay.  My only complaint is that it's right-handed only. 

U-Haul Pads

I made the switch to all fleece bedding all the time just over two years ago.  Before that, only the upper portions of the guinea pig cage were fleeced (I've been doing that since I've had a C&C cage).  In general, I've been happy with a full fleeced cage.  I was recently reviewing old blog posts and realized I could use a few updates; my cage cleaning routine has evolved over the years.  So this is the first in a short series on my experiences with fleece bedding.  (If you're unfamiliar with using fleece bedding with guinea pigs, a great place to start is The Fleece Project.)

Layered up: U-Haul pad on the bottom,
then towel(s), then fleece

Fleece bedding smells best when it has a chance to air out.  Unfortunately Cannoli is a big drinker, which means she's a pees a lot.  I need to change the bedding more frequently and end up with a lot of stinky laundry.

I know some people use U-Haul pads or puppy pads.  When I made the full switch to fleece two years ago, I had several old towels on hand and saw no reason to purchase more bedding.  Cannoli's drinking is motivating me to research my options.  I recalled an article by Cali Cavy Collective about their experience with U-Haul pads.  (Check it out - she has way better photos than I do.)  She said that using furniture pads helped extend time between cleanings.  Extra towels wasn't working for me, so I figured this was an inexpensive solution to try out.

Full of Fleece

This is the last of my fabric purge.  I will be back to a quilting project that I'm struggling with:  should I rip or should I continue with the quilting?  I can't keep pushing it off.  I've finally run out of distractions.

In the meantime, I have a wonderful pile of guinea pig fleeces.  I had some of the cotton fabric for 20 years.  It feels so good to get this stuff sewn into something.  I will never open the drawer again and see a pile of it.  The few small leftover pieces have become QAYG hexie backing and various sized scrap squares for my next scrappy project.  Yay!

Now I need to get some new thread, throw on my freemotion quilting foot get working on something pretty to show off.

Bumper Pad

Poor Cannoli.  She has really taken a shine to the new free-range ramp.  She loves that it's the perfect escape hatch.  If I make a grab for her and Noli doesn't want to be caught, she makes a beeline to the ramp.  I can't catch her once she's on the ramp.  So I learned - I close the gate before I go after her.  But she forgets that the gate can be closed or doesn't see the grids.  I've seen her do a hard brake just before leaping, or worse, face plant into the closed gate in a full run.  Ouch.

I know Noli will figure it out eventually, but after watching her hit that grid at full tilt, I wanted to prevent her from doing that again.  (Silly pig should stop running away from me!)  I moved the hay rack to the gate.  Can't miss it when the ramp is closed.  Plus the hay will be a good cushion if she forgets and runs into it anyway.

I love my hay rack but it requires two hands to fill it.  It was impossible to thread the hay into in the back corner of the cage.  So I whipped together a new version last week that's a top-loader.  Not a bad design, although it sags in the middle a little. Cannoli and Boadicea seem to dump it quicker than the old rack.  I may tinker with it over the next few weeks.  At least it should keep Noli from bonking her nose!

Finished Ramp

I'm officially done adding the ramp to the guinea pig cage for free-ranging.  The last step was to cover the whole thing with fleece.  This hadn't been part of the original design.  I discovered the hardware cloth had a rough edge even when I folded it over.  I didn't want the rough edge to rub along the back wall.  I also didn't want to chance piggy toes getting caught in any exposed squares.  So fleecing it should keep the paint from getting scratched and keep everyone's toes safe.

The landing originally had overhead supports.  I didn't like that and moved them underneath.  It's a lot sturdier.  I decided the landing doesn't need a cover because Cannoli and Boadicea have lost interest hanging out there.  I pee-proofed (with a little piece of shower curtain) the bottom of the ramp.  They spend time there debating if they want to cross the floor or not. 

Camouflaged Cavy

Boadicea usually doesn't try to hide from me but she must be practicing her stealth mode, just in case.  Doesn't she match the background so well?  I bought these fleece patterns because I thought they'd be good for hiding poo.  I hadn't considered they'd be good for hiding guinea pigs as well.  If this wasn't such a close up shot, she'd blend right in!

The other day I walked into the room as I heard the water bottle rattle.  At first glance, there was no guinea pig at the bottle - until the nose popped out of the tunnel.  Boadi made me think of a kid wrapped up in a sleeping bag on Saturday morning.

A Slew of Sewing

September was a slow month for sewing - vacation and several days of not feeling well will do that.  Now that I'm feeling better, it's like SEW ALL THE THINGS!

I keep slopping stuff all over the table next to the guinea pig cage.  I've had to refinish the table recently, and figure a table topper may prevent more damage.  In August I made a stack of half triangle squares from Summer Seashore trimmings.   I've started on a table topper with the HTS and some other summer scraps.

Snug as a Bug

Looking at this, one would assume it's the depths of winter.  Granted, last Saturday morning was a bit chilly.  However, the house was at a comfortable temperature when I found Boadicea like this.

I am also rather amused at how her dewlap hangs out like she has a little beard.  Makes her look grumpy.

Get off my lawn, you young whipper-snappers!