Door Draft Dodger

The weather has been turning colder & we just had our first snow of the year & with that comes cold drafts. This is important, because of my poor circulation. I get cold so easily & wear sweaters year round.The most significant cold draft we get, is the bottom of our back door. We currently rent, whilst looking for a house to buy, so we can't do much in the way of properly weatherizing anything, so I had to come up with an alternative. As a kid, I remember my mom having a super long fabric stuffed duck that she put at the bottom of the door to our basement. Very similar to this...

So I decided to look for a pattern that was already done, to make my life easier. However, after doing a quick search, I came across these examples...

...& decided, why not do it, but "make it Sweet Tooth" inspired. I kept my first draft (so punny) of the Dog recreation that Boogie had ripped apart & decided to recycle as much of that as I could. 

I didn't want it to be as wide, as wider means more stuffing is required, so I had to trim off part of each of the sock pieces. 

I also had to reduce the width of the underside pieces.

I had to reduce the circumference of the bum to now fit the new dimensions..

I also had to lengthen the center sweater area, as I needed it to be about 38" long to cover the width of the door plus a bit, to ensure no gaps. 

The ears on the first model were fine as they were already smaller than the second more accurate version. I did cut down the eye patches, the nose, & shortened the legs to keep them from getting caught under the door. As a lot of the stitching on the ears was gone, I decided to redo the stitching with blue embroidery floss in the spirit of the more accurate one. 

I filled it with a 5-lb bag of uncooked regular white rice. If I'd used floss, it would have been too light to be effective & would have felt like a toy to him. Typically these would have plastic craft pellets, but I feared the dog might try chewing it & didn't want to take the chance. So, rice it was.

It works brilliantly!!! Too well. Boogie goes & lays on the tile in front of our front door now. I thought about making a boogie one to put there, but if the real thing wants the job, who am I to say no??? LOL 

I hope you are inspired to try making your own version & sharing it with me.