...free camping pad...tutorial...

...we had a memory foam mattress pad left over from Scout's old bed (which we donated)...and of course I didn't want to throw it away...

...so I made a flannel envelope for it to become a new camping pad...

...I just laid it out on top of two layers of the flannel and cut around it...

...I left some extra material at the top of one piece of the fabric - to fold over and hold a flat piece of wood...which will help with rolling the pad up...

...then I just stitched around three sides of the pocket...and turned it back right side out over the pad...this was probably the hardest part...you can't stuff too hard or you'll tear the foam...but you don't want the cover to be loose...

...you may have to do a little bit of adjusting to make sure the seams line up along the sides...

...turn under and top stitch the top end of the cover...this is a little bit tricky as now the pad makes maneveuring the material into the sewing machine a little bit difficult...just make sure you have plenty of room so you don't knock things over with the big ole pad sticking out of your machine...and it's just one quick seam so it won't take too long...

...I had already sewn the flap on the bottom into a tube for the rolling stick...

...so slide the rolling stick into it's tube...

...turn under and stitch the tube closed...again it's a little bit tricky...if your machine is portable you might want to just put it on the floor...or you could sew this little bit by hand...

...next I got out 3 skeins of acrylic yarn in complementary colours...red...blue...and grey...and crocheted a chain of about 100 stitches on my largest crochet hook...

...folded those in half and stitched them to the bottom of the pad...

...and rolled the pad up and tied the ties...

...I'm so happy with this new camping pad...I'm going to take it to Wilderness...No...Scout says he's taking this one and I can have the boring old brown one...HA!