Camera Strap Tutorial

I'm so excited! I get to have the cutest little camera at the portrait hot spots with my snazzy new camera strap. It was so easy to make. Like for real! My mom is convinced we could whip out 100 of these a day and should go in business! Unfortunately, Helen Keller could sew straighter than me and I'm sure our customer service line would be blowing up with people saying that they ordered a straight stitch and they got a zig-zag. Needless to say, I sewed the first 2 and my mom sewed the other 23 that we made.

I'm pretty sure it's self-explanatory how to sew a tube, but just in case, here is a tutorial for you.

First, go to Hobby Lobby or any other fabric store and pick out 14 different fabrics, because they are just to cute to narrow it down to two ten. You really only need 2 but I'm sure you can't resist either. If you choose to buy 14, apologize sympathetically to the poor girl cutting 1/4 yards of 14 different fabrics and offer to help her return them to the right place. I'm sure she has better things to do.


We ended up cutting them the width of the fabric (less 12" of the length to have some extra fabric to make flowers, ties, etc.)and 2.5 inches wide because I wanted mine to be extra long to scrunch a little bit.

Once you have your pieces cut, put right sides together and sew a 1/4" seam down one side. If you aren't a great seamstress, you can pin them down. Had I done this step, my seam might not look like a drunk walking the sobriety test line. Make sure to catch both pieces as you are sewing. It is possible that you may miss the bottom piece by a hair in a few places and have to use the handy dandy ole seam ripper and start over. I'm not sure. I'm just saying it's possible.

Once you have your first seam sewn, go pull out the mother of all irons

and iron it open flat.

Then come get your deadly weapon of a rotary cutter and cut your ends straight and even.


Once your ends are cut, go back to the iron and turn the ends under twice so that your raw edges are tucked inside the seam

then sew them down on both ends all the way across.

Now you are ready to sew your other long seam. Again, make sure that you catch both the top and bottom pieces. Seam ripping is never fun!



Now it's time to turn it right side out. We used a skinny PVC pipe and a chop stick. Put the PVC in the tube about 1.5" down



and stuff the end of the strap into the PVC with the chop stick. Keep sliding the strap up and stuffing it into the tube. In no time, it will be right side out.

Go back and iron it out flat to finish it off.


Now back to the 12" of the length that we cut off... I basically did the same thing, turning the ends up and sewing 2 side seams. It gave me a shorter mini version of what we had just made. I just tied it in a knot around the strap to pretty it up a little bit. We did some with a lens cap pocket, some with fabric flowers and the rest are just sitting there. We went to Hobby Lobby and to grab some dinner.



If you have an SLR, you should definitely make one. I'm all for supporting my brand (Canon rocks!) but not with an ugly EOS 5D camera strap. I'm going to try making a wristlet for my pocket camera next time. I'll post that tut when I do.