Marie WheelerA.D. is likely the best gift-giver on the planet. If we were keeping score on thoughtfulness points, I would lose on the daily.
But it is merely days before Christmas! Well, sometimes the joy can come early, and this year it certainly did in the form of my very own Sony a6000 camera with two lenses. I’m kinda stoked at the prospect.
So what do I after squeeing over my new toy? Why I consider how to best personalize it!
I searched through Etsy and Ebay and Amazon for an awesome octopus camera strap. Why octopus? I’m honestly not sure, it’s kind of a thing and likely the reason I’m also fascinated by HPL’s Cthulhu. Either way, I wanted an octopus on my camera strap!
Since I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, I decided to search instead for my favorite octopus fabric. It’s called Mendocino Octopus by Heather Ross. It is beautiful, but rare and there are only remnants left. I bought a nice fat quarter with blue octopus to complement another variation of the fabric already in my possession.
I knew I was never going to use the stock strap again, so I used my seam ripper to deconstruct the pieces I needed to attach the fabric ‘scarf’ to the camera.
I then sewed the three pieces of octopus fabric together end to end and then created a tube by sewing the long edge. The tube was then turned right-side-out and I folded the ends toward the center on each side until I ended up with an end that was about 1 1/2″ and pinned it. The black nylon strap was then inserted into the raw end about 1″ and the whole batch stitched together heavily. Remember, you are going to have a camera swinging and hanging from this seam for a while. You really can’t get too much support in there.
It was at this time that I realized I had some ugly ends. In retrospect, I should have tucked the raw edges before going ‘sew’ crazy. Since I wasn’t going to rip out all those stitches, I made another ‘tube’ of fabric that tapered on one end. The end caps were hand-sewn in place and the strap attached.
Isn’t she beautiful!?! I spent $9 for the fabric and about an hour of my time to make something that is unique and that I totally love. Take the time to make something today, even if it’s a mess. It’ll be fun.
Well, that’s it for today, see ya’ll soon!
