My Poppet : your weekly dose of crafty inspiration: How To: Make a Toddler size Duvet from a single bed Duvet

I have never enjoyed sleeping with sheets and blankets, I'm a doona/duvet girl all the way. So now that Emma has graduated to a toddler bed I thought it was time she had a duvet of her own. I have quite bad dust mite allergies which improved once I started using a wool filled duvet, but I really struggled finding a toddler duvet for Emma that wasn't feather or cheap polyfill. What to do?

Then I had a brain wave...make my own.
I purchased a single bed Aussie wool filled duvet (on sale, yay!) and here's what I did:
(please excuse the quality of the photos - night time sewing)

Note - This project although looking quite straight forward was a bit challenging to finish to my very high standard. I would recommend it only to confident sewers as the sheer bulk of the quilt made it difficult to handle.

Step 1: Decide on the size you need the finished duvet to be and mark these out on your large duvet with a tailors marker or pencil. The size to fit Emma's bed is 100cm x 140cm

Step 2: Rather than cutting the duvet, which would let some of the filling out making a big mess, I decided to use my overlocker (serger) to cut and finish the edges at the same time. Sew along the marked lines. Also cut/serge away the current binding to reduce the bulk on the existing edges.

My overlocker managed to (just) get through ok but I had to pull it through as it was a little bulky, this caused me to break a needle, so take it slow.

You can stop at this stage if you don't mind an overlocked/serged edge as a finish. I chose to bind the edges to make it neater.

Step 3: Mark a small curve on the corners and cut.

Step 4: Bind edges with bias binding. I used the technique explained in yesterdays tutorial, although the finish was not to my usual high standard (I'm really anal with my binding). The bulk of the duvet made it difficult but I think it looks pretty neat considering.