handmade homewares

my puppy and i had a pole incident the other day. that sounds odd, i know, but read on and it'll make more sense. i take my puppy for a run every morning, and the other morning we had a classic, hilarious accident. i ran to the left of a pole, she ran to the right, which of course landed both of us on our bums. it would've looked so funny, but it also broke her lead. so instead of heading off to buy another one, i raided my bag of old clothes that i've kept for creativity and made her another one (reuse, recycle people!). 

 1. first, i cut the bottom off a long shirt.

2. then i cut down one of the side stitching so i had a long rectangle piece of material.

3. i measured out and cut strips of my shirt material about 4cm wide (i know that it looks a different colour but that's just my awesome photography). i cut about 5 of these, which resulted in a lead of about 2 metres.

4. i folded each piece over to about 1cm wide and then sewed the ends and the middle to keep it's shape. i then sewed them all together to make one long string.

  

5. i then did the same for a different coloured material, except i only cut and sewed 3 pieces as it is going to be the middle detail, and doesn't need to be as long as the first piece.

6. i folded the the first long piece in half, but in a way that the two ends met a little way from the actual end of the loop. i then put the 2nd piece of different coloured material in between the two sides of the loop with about 10cm sticking out the end, along with the join of the loop and sewed them together. this left me with three free strands. (on a side note, i am so glad that i have pictures to help explain this!!)

here's a close up of what i was describing (or at least trying to).

 7. and then i set about plaiting my little heart out.

8. when i finally got to the bottom end of my plait, i had a large length of the middle pink material and a small loop of the aqua left.

9. i held the plait together and wrapped the remainder of the pink material around the end of the plait, and then tucked the end in to hide it and sewed it secure.

10. then with the larger loop end i wrapped the excess pink material around the sewed junction and tucked the end in to make it neat and sewed it all up. 

11. now for the pictures of how it all comes together! the small loop goes through where the clip of a normal lead would go.

 12. then feed the rest of the lead through the small loop.

and voila! it's tied on securely without the use of a clip. then the large loop becomes the handle, and the plait the main part of the lead itself. the plait really reinforces the shirt material, so it's strong enough to handle a little puppy bouncing at the end of it.
aaaand then off to the beach :)













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