Made With Love: Cat Teepee

Hey guys!

So last week my friend Alexis texted me to ask what I was up to, and I had to lie to her because it was too embarrassing to admit I was making a teepee for my cat on a Saturday night

"Cat Teepee's: For people with lots of friends that lead busy lives"

Oh my life...

But I feel like I have a good excuse!

My best friend Kennedy and I are looking for a place to live next year, and it will inevitably be a small University student apartment. So since there wont be a lot of room, I need something for my cat to sleep in that doesn't take up a lot of space, but that is visually appealing... hense the cat teepee!

I've never made a teepee before, so this is my version of what to do!

What you'll need:

♥ A Cat Basket- I just used the one I already had. Since she loves this basket, I thought it would make her more willing to sleep in her teepee, plus it saved me a lot of steps in making the base

♥ Sticks- I had a whole bunch I had collected in the woods for a previous project. Just find the longest, straightest, sticks you can!

♥ Yarn- Or any string

♥ Fabric- I used some leftover unbleached cotton from when I was making tea towels, you'll need about 2 meters

♥ Needle and Thread (not pictured)- Or a sewing machine... I strongly recommend a sewing machine unless you want to be sewing all day!

♥ A couple buttons (not pictured)- Or Velcro

♥ A Ruler (not pictured)- As long as possible!

♥ Scissors- The sharper the better!

♥ Fabric Markers- (optional). You could also use paint or a sharpie, if your not planning on ever washing the teepee

I started off by securing the sticks to the 4 corners of the basket with some yarn

Once I had them all secured, I tied the 4 sticks together in the middle with some more yarn

Next your going to have to measure out your cuts

I've made a little template (above) that shows you roughly what you are cutting. The orange square in the middle is your basket, the black lines sticking out of the orange box should be equal to the length of your sticks, and the bases of the triangles are equal to the length of each side of the basket.

If you are looking at the template above and thinking "what!?", then you're probably looking at the bottom triangle. That one isn't a triangle at all, its two strips of fabric that are overlapping. This will be the entrance to the teepee! The black circle is the button

I recommend measuring out every triangle individually, because your sticks are most likely not perfectly straight, and that will change the length of sides of the triangles

Here are my triangles, all cut out and waiting... don't worry if they aren't perfect! Your cat most likely wont notice ;)

Once you've cut out your triangles, sew them together... the purple lines in the template above are the ones that get sewed together

Once you've sewed together all your pieces and you have wrapped the cover over your teepee skeleton, you'll probably have a weird flap sticking out on the side

I secured mine down with a nice big button so that the teepee would still be removable

I also added a smaller little button so that the two entrance flaps would sit together nicely

Now the fun part... drawing on the teepee!

I was imagining drawing some beautiful Coast Salish inspired designs on my teepee, possibly featuring feline related pictures, like fish or birds... but I'll be honest when I say the creative juices were NOT flowing

Lucky, that was easily remedied with a quick Google search of "teepee designs", that lead me to this post by Faye over at You Are The River... she and her friend made a gorgeous human sized teepee, and thought up this dope design which I totally copied... thanks Faye!

If you're a fan of contemporary design, I strongly recommend checking out her blog if you have a free minute, some very cool stuff going on over there!