Let me start by saying that this is a post filled with less than pretty pictures. You'll see both my cutting board and ironing board up close and personal, and they're ugly. But they work perfectly well, so ugly it is. Oh, and Lucy, who just turned one and is rarely calm unless she's asleep, wasn't in the mood to stay still at all, so the pictures of the "model" in action aren't the best either.

Ms. Lucy wore out her collar. It was pretty and purple but for some reason it was fraying a lot.

Rather than run to Target and buy her a new one I opted to make one for her.


And Miss Lucy now had a beautiful, pink, flowery collar, perfect for a precious girl.

And so, so easy. So easy that I thought I'd go ahead and make another, just so I could show you how easy it is!

Lucy couldn't care less what her collar looks like, silly little girl, so she was perfectly ok swapping out her beautiful floral collar for an equally beautiful new pink and green collar, so here we go:

To begin cut a piece of fabric 1.5" wide by about 18-20" long. Then cut a piece of fusible interfacing the same size.


Fuse interfacing to backside of fabric.


Press the piece of fabric in half, wrong sides together, down the entire length of the fabric piece.


Open the pressed seam and press both side edges to the newly created center seam, again continuing down the entire length of the fabric piece.


Fold lengthwise and press one more time, creating a 4-layer thick 3/8" wide by 18-20" long piece of fabric.


Sew along the open edge with a minimal seam allowance, about 1/16-1/8". Leave the ends as is - raw (they'll get tucked in soon)


Attach a slide to one end of the long fabric strap, trimming, if necessary, and turning the end under first, and stitch.


Attach one buckle end by threading the strap first through the buckle and then through the slide. When this step is complete it should look like the picture below, with the slide showing on top of the strap.

Attache the remaining buckle piece to the open end, again trimming and folding the open end in first.


That's it. See, simple.

Attach to cat and admire your hard work.

I was able to reuse the buckle and slide from Lucy's original collar. If that's not an option break-away collar hardware can be purchased at Etsy for between $.30 and $1.50 per set, depending on the quantity you need.