Dog pull toy from recycled fabrics

Plan A - Make a dog toy from recycled fleece following a video from Youtube. I watched several videos before I became competent with the four strip plait. Here's the finished product but I thought the colour was a little boring.

Plan B - Use different colours. I had no more fleece apart so I thought I'd cut some old T-shirts into strips.

The strips weren't very long but I persevered and …

dog pull number 2 emerged. 

The knots had to be pulled really tight.

Result - Too small. Now how can I cut the T-shirt to make the strips longer? Hang on, I've got an old fleece jacket. Use that. I couldn't remember how to cut a long strip from a rectangle but by trial and error ...

Plan C

I made a plan. Fold in half and cut up to the edges.

Snip at the appropriate places to make one continuous strip. I rounded off the corners and then set off using two pink strips and two yucky brown strips.

The knots have to be pulled really tight and pulling one strip at once was better that pulling opposite pairs. I worked anticlockwise using this method.

Now that's much better.

When I get four different coloured strips the pattern will be different.

The hardest bit was tying the knot at the end. I had quite long strips so the largest pull was fairly easy to knot with longer ends.

This video shows how to cut a continuous length and how to braid. You may not be able to sit through it all though!

:)

xx