We might as well admit it, we love fleece. In the world of fabric, it’s about as close to perfect as you can get.
It’s soft and warm, but lightweight and easy to work with, whether sewn by hand or machine. It doesn’t ravel and is plush enough to hide a few off-kilter stitches. It is strong, washes well and comes in almost every color and print imaginable. It can be a bit pricey per yard, but it’s wide and usually goes on sale on a regular basis.
Any guesses as to what may appear on this week’s materials list? If you’ve got some fleece remnants tucked away, now’s the time to dig them out.
While shopping for dog food at the pet store in December, we took a detour through the dog-toy aisle and found a wonderful braided tug toy made out of hippie-look tie-dyed fleece.
Needless to say, we couldn’t pass it up — even though the dog-toy basket at our house already takes up roughly a quarter of the living room.
We looked at the toy carefully once we got it home and decided it would be simple to make some less fancy toys out of fleece remnants in our fabric stash. And we could customize them — make them larger or smaller to suit different dogs, or even color- or pattern-coordinate them for specific breeds — as desired.
The only other materials we’d need would be vinyl or rubber balls, and we’d only need these if we planned to try and duplicate our purchased toy. A perfectly acceptable toy could be made without adding a ball to the mix, but we headed for the store anyway.
Since it was snowing a bit, we decided to check the pet aisle at our local supermarket instead of making the trek back to the pet store, and found exactly what we needed. We purchased a plastic bumpy ball, a little football and a foam ball (which turned out to be a bad choice, but more about that later).
To make a braided fleece dog toy, the only skills needed are braiding and knot-tying.
If you take a look at our photo, you’ll see that by using a variety of braid and knot combinations you can make a variety of toys. We’ll go through each of our samples, from left to right.
For the first toy, we cut a hole through the center of the foam ball and pulled a single piece of fleece through the hole. This toy was the toughest to make; the foam was hard to cut, and the fleece stuck to the foam as we pulled it through.
But once we got the fleece in place through the ball, we proceeded by tying a large knot on one side of the ball, then cutting the fleece on that side into six strips, braiding it using three groups of two strips and tying small knots (two strips each) at the end.
We then went to the other side of the ball, cut the fleece in half and tied two knots close to the ball to secure. Then we cut the two halves into three strips each and knotted them again to form fringed ends.
To make our second toy, we cut holes on opposite sides of the bumpy ball large enough to run the fleece through but small enough to hold it securely. We took a length of fleece and cut it lengthwise into three equal strips. Beginning at the center of the strips, we made a regular braid long enough to form a handle, then joined the two ends together into a larger braid made of three groups of two strips each, braided a couple of inches and knotted it off.
We then ran the fleece through the ball, tied a large knot on the other side of the ball, then braided the fleece strips into two braids of three strips each and knotted each one to secure.
Our football toy was made by cutting holes in the opposite ends of the ball, running a length of fleece through and, leaving an equal length on each side, knotting the fleece close to each hole, then cutting the fleece into three equal strips and braiding, knotting at the ends to secure.
And finally, our fourth toy was made using the same procedure as for the second toy, except that we omitted the ball and used two large knots with a couple inches of braid in between in its place.
Note: All of our samples were made using fleece pieces that were approximately 6 to 8 inches wide and 40 to 50 inches long.
The toys made with the football and plastic bumpy ball were much easier to make than the one with the foam ball as they were hollow and had a slick finish.
And remember, as mentioned earlier, you can size these toys to suit a tiny Pomeranian or a massive mastiff.
Contact Jonetta Coffin at jrocoffin@aol.com.
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