June | 2010 | eefweef

A few of my friends have warned me not to dress up my dog as they think it will make him soft and make me look like an idiot. I’m not about to go dress him up like this or put diamanté collars on him, but I think bandanas are cute. So shoot me.

Dog Collar Bandana

Hmm, OK I don’t profess to be amazing and perfect at sewing, but nonetheless I will show you how I made this little bandana for Grizz. This bandana is designed to slide on over you dog’s regular collar.

You will need…
1 dog collar that fits your pup (remember when fitting a collar to leave enough room to fit 2-3 fingers between the collar and his neck)
A square of material big enough so that the diagonal is longer than the length of the collar (see pic below) Mine was 20x20cm square, the collar is 25cm long. I got the fabric in the scraps bin in Ikea, 100% cotton, bargain!
A Sewing machine, or needle & thread and patience.
An Iron for ironing the seams etc
Scissors
Measuring Tape (entirely optional)

Instructions…
1. Cut your material to size. Use the collar to measure against the diagonal of the square, leave some excess for seams. Ignore the screaming puppy who wants to get out of his crate. If it is a collar with a buckle measure from the hole that you use to close the collar to the end, not the whole length of the collar. If your pup still has a bit of growing to do you can make it a bit bigger.

Fold in the edges and iron along the creases to form the seams.

Fold in half diagonally and place the collar along the diagonal. Measure the width of the collar, leaving an allowance each side. Mine was 2.5cm. This will be the point that the collar will slide into the bandana so don’t make it too tight.

Unfold the square again. Double the measurement you took, using this measurement fold in one of the points of the square until the edge measures this (5cm in my case). See the photo below for a better explanation.

Iron these creases. Your collar should now be longer than the diagonal side of the bandana.

Sew along these creases and then cut the excess material on the inside

Return to the other two corners that will form the point of the bandana. If you can figure out a neater way to make them look tidy then well done, but here is how I did it. Fold the corners as in the photo below, you can snip off the very point of the corner to reduce bulk, iron the folds and pin them.