The Pet Net

Part of my goal for this year is to more efficiently use the space I've got in my home. Our house is 1400-ish square feet, so it's not terribly tiny. However, it's an old home, so closets are small, and the layout is not quite as accommodating for a modern lifestyle. That means I'm having to get creative and make storage space where there isn't any.

My first project of the new year involved making a hammock or "pet net" for my little one's burgeoning stuffed animal collection. I know I could have just bought one, but none of my local stores had them in stock, and I would've felt ridiculous ordering that one thing, paying for shipping, and having some delivery guy drive all the way out to the boonies for that. That's not very thrifty or eco-friendly either, especially when my mother had just given me a large, fantastically bright pink piece of nylon material that I had literally no plans for.

Now, I cannot find the tutorial that I originally used to make this hammock, so I'll do my best to describe what I did. First, I measured how large I needed the net to be. This is a corner net, so I went to the corner and eyeballed how far out into the room I wanted the hammock to be and measured from that point to the corner. Then I cut out a square according to those measurements, folded it in half diagonally to form a triangle, and cut it out.

So I had the triangle that was to become my hammock. I then sewed a small hem on each side, somewhere between 1/4 and 3/8 of an inch. After that, I folded each corner over and sewed it, which gave me a straight edge about 4 inches long at each corner. It looked something like the shape at the bottom left of this pic:

Source

The next step was to sew pockets for the hammock's hanging rope. I simply folded over each long side about 1 1/2 inches and sewed them like you'd do a rod pocket for a curtain. Then I ran a rope all the way through each pocket, starting at the corner that would be against the wall, i.e. the corner that forms the right angle. I made sure to leave enough extra rope so that  could have enough to  make loops at each corner, and then I tied it off. All that was left to do was install hooks in the ceiling and hang it up. Once I got it up, I made a few adjustments with the rope to get it to hang the way I wanted, then I loaded up with my little one's stuffed animals. Now she has more floor space and doesn't have to sort through her less played-with toys to get to her favorites.

Tell me that doesn't look nice?