Toothless has tried his Morrison Outdoors sleeping bag a few times just around the apartment and gets frustrated that the arms are a little long and restrict him from rolling over.

We tried tucking the arms in and it doesn’t stay.

Then we tried using painters tape to fold and shorten the arms and his mood improved significantly! He could crawl around and was having a blast.

We thought about how to shorten the arms for use while he slept and came up with two options

1. Tack the arm up with needle and thread
2. Use plastic snaps (using our K-Snaps kit)

Using needle and thread might leave holes in the nylon fabric when removed. We didn’t want to damage the fabric and leave holes once he fully grew into the sleeping bag.

The snaps approach is reversible and snaps can be added as his arms grow, if needed, to adjust the length. So we chose this approach.

Design

We folded the sleeves backwards so the fold / extra fabric would not get in the way when he crawls. This is how we tested with the tape and he had full mobility.

We used #20 snaps. The only colour we have for that size is pink – we are using one colour per size to make it easy to identify which snaps fit together. The link clashes with the blue but stands out so the snaps are easy to find.

We put the “female” end nearest the end of the arm to prevent the snap from being damaged when Toothless gets big enough to not need the snaps anymore. I suspect that he will spend a lot of time on his hands and I didn’t want the snap sticking out there.

With some measurements and attaching the snaps this took about 20 minutes. Pretty easy project!

We will give it a try camping tomorrow and adjust the sleep system as necessary.