Today’s post is the last Caturday post before Christmas, so we’re gonna get all Christmas-y up in here today with some DIY Christmas cat collars! Look how cute this thing is!
Now our cats can have some Christmas spirit too. 🙂
They’re simple to make, and completely customizable with different fabrics or embellishments. Here’s how to do it:
Christmas Cat Collars
You need:
- Christmas fabric
- elastic
- embellishments (I used gold cord and tiny jingle bells)
First, figure out how long your elastic needs to be. The easiest way to do this is to measure it against the normal collar your pet wears. You want the elastic in it’s normal, un-stretched state to be exactly the length of the collar. This way the elastic can stretch to go over their heads, but it isn’t tight or constricting while they’re wearing it.
Once you have your elastic cut to size, cut out a rectangle of fabric. Your rectangle should be 2-3″ wide and about 125% of the length of your elastic. That way it will bunch up nicely once it’s all put together.
Fold your fabric in half length-wise, right sides facing in, and sew all the way down the long edge with a small seam allowance.
Turn the fabric right side out. This part is difficult because it’s basically a long skinny tube, but if you use a skewer it’s much easier! Start turning the tube inside out, then gently push the fabric through with the non-pointy end of the skewer to help force it right-side out.
Once your tube is right-side out, press it flat. Then thread the elastic through the tube. Sew one end of the tube shut, making sure to include one end of the elastic as well.
Pull the other end of the elastic through the tube towards the other opening until it is flush, then tack the elastic in place. (The fabric will be a bit gathered up at this point.) Then take the sewn-shut side of the collar and stick it inside the open, tacked down side of the collar. Sew across both ends to make the collar into a full ring, and you’re done!
The cats put up with them surprisingly well! Usually they are not okay with me dressing them up, but they don’t seem to mind the collars at all.
Do you dress your pets up for holidays? I love dressing my cat up because everything looks so striking and fancy against his black fur. (And by dressing him up I mean tying fun colored ribbons to his collar for different holidays; I’m not full-on dressing him up as Captain Jack Sparrow or anything. I’m not a crazy cat lady, promise!)
Want to see the rest of the Caturday posts? Here they are!
If you’re looking for a few other Christmas crafts, check out these tutorials!
- DIY Snow Globe Christmas Ornament
- DIY Printed Fabric Gift Tags
- DIY Paper Curl Ornament
- Tin Can Snowman
- How To Display Holiday Cards
- Paper Envelope Advent Calendar
K @ Claiming Our Space says
Very cute cats! They look fab in their collars. Willow gets dressed up for Christmas. She has antlers and a jingle bell collar and surprisingly she doesn’t really mind either.
Katherines Corner says
prrrrrfect.. thank you for sharing at the Thursday Favorite Things blog hop.xo
Sie says
The collars look like they would be very comfortable for cats to like, so that is a great accomplishment. I luv kittes and doggies. Stopping in from Kathrines Corner Thursday hop.
Laurie says
Your cat collars are adorable. We have 3 cats and I don’t think they would let me put a collar on them, as much as I would love to dress them up. Maybe if I doped them up with Catnip first they may be a little more cooperative. 🙂 I’m visiting from Well Crafted Wednesdays. Happy Holidays!
Meeha Meeha says
Ha ha ha! I would LOVE to do this for my two cats, but they wouldn’t last a day :))) Beautiful, though!
Angela at A Typical English Home says
I bought my cat a festive collar last year, and the little monkey lost it the first time he went out! Might make him one of these though, they are super cute and look easy to do. Thanks for sharing the idea!
Diana Rambles says
Adorable! Come link up at my Linky Party.
Diana Rambles says
Thanks for linking up!
Debbie says
Those are so darn cute! I was going to say that I might try to make some for our dogs (they’re little), but I’m not sure they would appreciate having jingle bells hanging from their neck! 😉 But maybe I could talk them into it. 🙂
Debbie
Eileen says
I love these. Although, I see these as “DOG” collars. I have a yorkie and a cairn terrier who would look adorable in these. Great look!
Jessi says
They’d be adorable as dog collars too, for sure!
stacysewsandschools says
Thank you so much for this!! I was thinking about something along this line the other night. I am definitely going Pin this and make some cute collars for our 3 cats! 🙂