Christmas Gift To Make For Your Pet - Tutorial and Written Instructions

A TREAT TO HANG ON THE TREE

Hello everyone, today I am posting another tutorial, this one being a treat you can make for your pet.  The main focus will be creating a craft that doesn't require you to go out and buy new products, instead I hope you will be able to use bits and pieces from your home stash.  I encourage you to improvise where an item is not available and look at what you can recycle. They are easy enough to make that children can lend a helping hand.  Some basic straight stitch machine sewing is involved, but it can just as easily be hand sewn which may take longer to make.  I'm planting the seed, you go ahead and do it your way and most of all have some fun.

Written instructions can be downloaded here and if you scroll down you will see how I went about the construction of the pet treat hanger.  They look great hanging on a Christmas tree but put them up high enough so that your pet cannot get to them.



Here's how to construct the decoration.

Lay out the material and cut the patterned material about 1cm large all round than the felt piece.  I ironed the material and folded the edges in to make it a lot easier.

I folded each short end under the felt because later I will slide the end of the ribbon into this slot and then sew along the top edge to secure the loop which will be used to hang the decoration on the tree.

I pinned the long edges before sewing and I also ironed the edges to make it easier.  You could hand sew these edges with a blanket stitch if you didn't want to use a sewing machine.

Once I had the edges neat I simply selected a fancy stitch on my sewing machine and sewed around the two short and two long edges.  Finally, it was simply a matter of looping the ribbon one under the other.  These loops will hold the treat you have for your pet, so make them as big or as small as needed.  You can add bows, bells, plastic holly leaves to the decoration, whatever takes your fancy.

Once I had the loops pinned and the size I wanted, I sewed each loop in place using the sewing machine, this is probably the fiddliest part of the assembly.  You could just as easily hand sew the loops.

You could also place the ribbon loops on the felt before constructing the hanging decoration.  By doing it this way you won't see the stitching on the back of the decoration, it will be hidden when you add the larger patterned material to the back.

Alternatively, you don't have to use felt and Christmas material, you could use a special material like I did above and I added some bells to the ribbon.  The fact is I don't think your pet will mind how you construct this little gift, but he/she will be more interested in what is hanging in the loops.