Indy's new collar.

Santa brought us another child this past Christmas. The puppy kind. And like it was when all the other children came along, I have had lots more work to do. But I can also sew for this new child, I have discovered. Just this past week he outgrew his first collar. Poor baby, see how uncomfortable that must have been?

And now, isn't that cute (and manly)?

I didn't take pictures while I went along, so I'll just have to describe how it did it. It was really so easy that I don't know why everyone doesn't sew their own dog collars :).

First I cut a piece of fabric 4" wide and about 30" long. I was just guessing about the length and I ended up cutting some off later. This fabric was kind of thin, so I cut a piece of matching fusible interfacing which I ironed to the wrong side. Then I folded the fabric in half the long skinny way and pressed, and then opened it out and pressed the edges in. Finally I folded it back along the first fold and pressed, making a 1" strip kind of like super wide bias trim (except not cut on the bias). Then I stitched along both sides, close to the edges.

The "hardware" was not hard to find. I had a leftover 1" D ring from an earlier project which I used, and at Hobby Lobby (my new favorite store), I found this buckle:

And this strap adjuster: 

(2 came in the package, but I only needed one)

Then I sat down with the old collar:

And fiddled around with my components until it looked like I had the new parts assembled the same way as the old. At this point, the pieces were only pinned together. Then I very carefully tried the new collar on Indy (our new child) so as not to poke him. I had to make several attempts so that it would fit him perfectly at the new collar's smallest setting. It should be able to grow with him and extend quite a bit.

Viola! Now I'm thinking of making a matching leash.