Finished: Camera Strap Cover

Frigga and I have finished our first project together! (I have used her before, but it was for making a muslin of the wedding dress of doom- to be blogged at a later date). It ain’t much, but it will be wonderful during my belated honeymoon trip to Europe! And the simplest projects can be great because they’re practically instant gratification.

Meet my camera strap cover:

I used this tutorial for it which goes way more in depth on construction, but I’ll show you some of the process. After toting my fairly new DSLR camera (which I am OBSESSED WITH) around to some events, I realized the strap it came with, although nice and sturdy, is slightly uncomfortable against my bare skin. It has a tacky fabric on one side so it stays put on your neck, which causes lots of sweating and red marks on my fair skin. First world problems, I know.

I chose some M’Liss quilting cotton scrap fabric from a shirt I made over a year ago, which will show up in a future TBT post. I love the Asian inspired print and the beautiful teal color. My husband, DD, was ecstatic that he’ll look so macho when he’s having a turn with my camera. Whatever, my camera, my project, my choice!

This project only requires 2 strips of fabric, one longer than the other if you want the cute gathered look, and a strip of fusible fleece. You can do without the fleece but it feels soooo amazing against your neck, especially if you plan to have it dangling from there every day during a trip of a lifetime!

Follow the instructions on the packaging of the fusible fleece to fuse it to the WRONG side of the shorter fabric strip.

Turn under the end edges of both strips and stitch. Frigga was very unhappy with me for some reason, so only this part was a struggle. I may have put the bobbin in wrong, but after some fiddling, we made up and got along pretty well.

Gather the edges of the longer strip. I set Frigga on the longest stitch setting and sewed without backstitching (very important as you’ll want to pull the threads to make pretty gathers). Usually when I sew gathers, I sew 2 rows but for this project, 1 row worked. If you do this, just make sure you’re VERY careful not to snap the threads. The gathering takes a lot of man (woman?)-handling, so be patient.

Long stitches down either side of the long strip of fabric

Stitch length 4

Pull one thread and the fabric starts scrunching up

One gathered strap, one regular strap

Make sure your gathers are about even when you’re done. Pin right sides together and sew along the edges.

I clipped my seam allowances to take away some of the bulk:

The second fiddly part is turning the strap right-side out. Again, be patient. I was a little rough and tore a small hole in my stitching. No worries, it’s back like new after some swift hand-stitching. That’s not my first time rushing and roughing up my projects, then taking MORE time to fix my booboos.

Finally, pull the camera strap through your new cover. To make things easier, I pinned a safety pin to the end of my camera strap to make it easier to maneuver through the fabric.

And voila, you’re done!

Now time to go take some beautiful pictures of the things you love. For me, that’s mostly my kitties and chickies:

Caroline says, “OH HAI!!!”

Boudin gives me the bored/shifty-eyed/cute look

I’m coming for you next, Europe!