Materials for making hammocks/beds

[Xellie]

I feel like turning my hand to something creative, I have plenty of goo friendly polar fleece - so I wanted to make some liners/hammcks/cosy cube type things, but I'm not sure what I should sew with or what I could use to pad them out? Extra layers of fleece or something else between the layers?

[deguconvert]

Hmmm . . . that a good question! Something that will wash well. I wonder if real cotton batten . . . like for stuffing pillows . . . or maybe wool . . . would work?

[bouncy]

I've used fleece for beds before, and used both extra layers of fleece and quilting wadding. If you don't mind looking around, you can also get natural fibre wadding from cotton, wool, or bamboo.

[lindie]

Nov 2, 2021 20:03:22 GMT Xellie said:

I feel like turning my hand to something creative, I have plenty of goo friendly polar fleece - so I wanted to make some liners/hammcks/cosy cube type things, but I'm not sure what I should sew with or what I could use to pad them out? Extra layers of fleece or something else between the layers?

I recommand using old towels as the absorbant layer.

I use fleece pads which I sow myself as the main bedding for my guinea pigs. And I also use fleece pads on the smaller levels and ledges for my degus.
When I make them I always use old towels for the absorbant layer. what I do is one layer of fleece, old towel and then fleece again. This works great. I have noticed that my degus don't chew the fleece but do like to nibble on the towel, so that is why I recommend to sow the towel in between the 2 fleece layers.

Oh and I recommand washing the fleece pads with vinegar instead of laundry detergend. Vinegar is much more natural and also cleans the pads, The pads still have a animal smell after washing, but this doesn't matter to the animals
The reason why I don't reccomand using laundry detergent is because it makes my guinea pigs sneeze.

[bouncy]

Just as an added caution - towels are made from long cotton threads. If one of these is pulled (particularly inside a bed), it can wrap around a limb and restrict blood flow. We would recommend regularly inspecting and removing these!