krafting with k: Dog Treat Caddy Tutorial

This Saturday, the day after EARTH DAY, please stop by again for an important announcement and GIVEAWAY!!!!!

On with the tutorial-----

Sooo, we have the two cutest puppies in the world:

Toby and Darla

But let's be honest, sometimes they can be downright...um..BAD!!! So, like any responsible pet owners we train them (and spay/neuter!).

The tricky part is when we take them on walks. We are big fans of rewarding these pups for their good behavior, but we don't really want treat crumblies in our pockets. Also, let's be honest ladies; do we even have room in our pockets for anything? Yeah, women's jeans are not meant for carrying stuff. Solution? Treat carriers! (Which are also big enough to carry a roll of poopie bags!!)

Now, PetSmart sells treat carriers (or as they call them, Biscuit Buddies) for 5-10 bucks, but they aren't very stylish. So I decided to make some of my own. For about 50 cents (because I used scraps yay!) and a half hour of your time, you can make one too! I started with two items to make my pattern: a cup and a ruler. I used the wide part of the cup for my circle, and I made a 6x14 rectangle for the walls.

I used two fabrics. The lining was some ripstop nylon from my mother's giveaway stash, and some flannel (the blue flannel was from mom, the pink paisley was on clearance at JoAnns-it is so cute I couldn't resist! Get ready to see A LOT of it soon!).

So, I cut one of each piece (the circle and the rectangle) out of both the nylon and the flannel. Now, let me tell you I did the blue bag first, and I did it all wrong. It came out, um, okay. However, I am going to show you the better way. So, take your rectangle pieces and put your flannel and your lining on top of each other, then fold them in half, with the flannel touching itself. Now, stitch the edge (I used 3/8 inch seam allowances):

Then, choose which end will be your bottom. Take the two circle pieces, and again with the flannel touching the flannel, stitch them together. Circles are tricky, tricky creatures. They involve a lot of fine fingerwork and slow stitching. Take your time, and if you don't get it the first time, keep practicing. Just think: this is really, really good practice for sewing in a shoulder seam.

Now, I suggest you sew exactly as show in this picture; it is a lot easier to pin and stitch around the circle this way without catching other bits of the bag along the way. Read: less quality time with a seam ripper.

Okay, so trim the seams and guess what?? Now all you have to work on is the top!! With the first attempt, I just folded the edges down and stitched on some velcro. But as you can see, it looks kinda crappy. So on the second try, I measured what it would be when I rolled the edge down, and then I sewed the velcro on first.

Pleas ignore the fact that the velcro
is out of focus in this picture.

Okay so then I rolled the fabric up under the velcro (so there would be no scraggly ends) and stitched, about an inch from the top. Check it out, open and closed:

Now for the important part: a loop to hook it to my jeans! I just used a piece of ribbon and some more velcro, and stitched them right on to the bag. Check out the finished product!