Racing to bed!

When Vaughan graduated from his cot (many years ago), he moved into a car bed. I think this racing car fabric was bought around that time - with thoughts of making a doona cover.

I listed the material on eBay but decided I may as well use it (rather than receive less than $1.00 for my efforts), so ended the auction.

I've been busy the past couple of days, revamping an old quilt for Vaughan to use in the caravan.

The quilt was cut down to about 94cm wide.  I shortened it a little, too. 

The new cover has a series of loops along the wall side.  It may be that we'll use them with the weight bar (if the blankets are not needed) or improvise some other fastening system, when necessary.  It doesn't matter if the loops aren't used, they tone in with the fabric and are not highly visible when viewing the bunk from a normal standing position.

Vaughan likes to read in bed and I'm thinking of using some of the leftover quilt fabric to create a bedside pocket similar to the one I made for myself.

Bedding down (or up)!

I returned the 4WD mat to Vaughan's top bunk yesterday, then made the bed using my newly-created inseparable sheets. Wow!

I still had to stand on a milk crate but the job was so much quicker and easier - no contortionist antics for me!  I was very impressed with my excellent work!

Installing the blanket and weight-lifter rod was a bit trickier, so I called on Nick for assistance.  The sticking point was that I wanted the blanket edges to hang evenly on the non-wall side - you know, within a few millimetres of each other!  When it became (more) obvious that wasn't a realistic expectation, I compromised so the top edge overhangs the other by a small margin.  The blankets still look neat when the edges are not tucked under the mat and I'm quite happy with the end result. 

Weighing options?!

Keeping Vaughan's top bunk bedding in place is a two-part mission. Now that I've made my first pair of inseparable sheets, it was time to ensure the blankets would also stay put.

Nick and I discussed several options.  We both had a similar idea of using a heavy rod to weight the blankets along the wall side of the bed.

There is a shallow channel, where the bunk platform hinges to the wall.  The rod should sit nicely in that space, holding the blankets on top of Vaughan.

I have a number of woollen blankets, bought at bargain prices from various op-shops.  Although I'd been using this one on our caravan bed, it makes better sense for Vaughan to use it, doubled over, on his bunk.

Nick and I visited our favourite tip shop today.  We were particularly looking for a rod, used for holding weights.  We found one even better than we'd hoped to get. 


In fact, we came away with a swag of stuff, all for $15.00! The rod represents less than $5.00 of that total price.  It weighs around 7kg and should work well for our purpose.  When we found it, there were some clamps bolted to the rod ends (to hold the weights).  Nick had expected a different configuration, which would have required him to use the metal grinder.  He was very happy to un-bolt the clamps - and took them off before I could take photos!

I made a simple cover for the rod, using some off-cuts from the inseparable sheet project.  The ends are turned over and held firm by some scraps of elastic.

It's cold outside - and raining - so at this stage the 4WD mat is on the lounge room floor with the rod in place.  All looks good and fingers crossed will work well once properly fitted to Vaughan's top bunk!

Inseparable Sheets!

Our last camping trip highlighted some bedding issues, particularly for Vaughan's top bunk. He lost all his blankets during the night and was very cold when he woke and migrated into our bed, some time in the early hours of Saturday morning.

I've been looking at caravan bedding options.  I thought trucker sheets were a neat idea - but I was looking for a lower-cost solution.

As I view the link now it occurs to me that even if funds were available, the single bed size would swamp the 4WD mat that Vaughan prefers to use on his top bunk.

I started googling and learned the term inseparable sheets - hah!  That's what I needed to make!

The linked tutorial gave instructions for joining the top sheet and fitted bottom sheet along the bottom edge.  I wanted to join my sheets along the long (wall) side edge as well as the bottom, so needed to adapt the method.

At some stage Vaughan had spilled (or smeared) finger paint on the bottom sheet.  I took the opportunity to cut away that section as part of the 32cm strip that was removed. 

The bottom sheet now has a joining seam but looks OK.  I overlocked the raw edges and have sewn the seam to one side, using a wide zig-zag stitch. The sheet was still too deep, so I cut away an equivalent amount on all sides and re-made the elastic casing, using the original measure-ments. (The first turn-over was 1.5cm and the second was 2cm). I re-used the elastic but shortened it by around 30cm because of the width section I removed.

I halved the top sheet length-wise - thinking that I can possibly make three inseparable sheet sets from this and another pair of sheets (which will be next on the upcycling list).  The original side hem was quite generous, so I unpicked that and sewed a narrower hem.  I shortened the sheet by about 35cm, then overlocked the raw bottom and long side edges.

The tricky part was sewing the top sheet to the bottom fitted sheet.  It would have been easier just to join the two along the bottom edge but I didn't want to do that!  After some fiddling, I folded a hospital corner on the wall side.  That gave a starting point to pin the rest of the top sheet along the bottom edge.  (You can see the fitted sheet encourages a hospital corner on the non-wall side, also).

Once I'd sewn along the bottom edge and a little around the wall side corner, I gave up using pins and just sewed slowly - stretching the bottom sheet as I went and being very careful not to catch the elastic in the casing.  I think I did OK.  You can see the two sheets joined in the bottom collage pic.  The joining seam is very narrow due to avoiding the elastic within the casing.  Fingers crossed it will be sufficient to hold the two sheets together!