DIY St. Patrick's Day Dog Bandanas

Lucky dogs? Yes, Indeed! These DIY St. Patrick's Day themed dog bandanas combine several of our archived DIY techniques, and you can easily adapt the ideas to make your own customised look and DIY design. Here are the DIY details (and some more cute pics of these very happy looking lucky pat-collecting pups).

DIY Valentine's Day Dog Bandanas

Hey there, Valentines! Who wants kisses??? These DIY Valentine's themed dog bandanas combine several of our archived DIY techniques, and you can easily adapt the ideas to make your own customised look and DIY design. Here are the DIY details (and a few extra kisses).

DIY Dog Bandanas with Serged Edges

Serging the edges of DIY dog bandanas can be a great option for speed, style, or material factors. Plus it's incredibly easy, if you have a suitable machine. If only it was just as easy to get these two rascals to smile at the same time when posing together! Haha!  Humphrey is always such a serious young lad:

Styling a DIY Reversible Dog Bandana for Versatile Wear

Feeling stylish, furfriends? Here's a easy way to style a basic triangle dog bandana with four different design options for more versatile wear, plus DIY instructions for sewing your own bandanas. Pawfect! Doggy dress up around our place usually means a simple bandana (perhaps a bow tie for extra special occasions). As much as I like dressing our boys in matching bandanas sometimes, I'm also a realist about the impracticality of having a full duplicate wardrobe.  Similarly, as much as I like holidays, it's also nice to use each bandana more than once or twice a year. Here's an easy compromise that lets me play dress-up with more variety and greater options.

DIY Waterproof Dog Raincoat

Weather smeather... With two big dogs and the typical New Zealand climate, wet walkies are a regular occurrence. In the past, we would just suck it up (admittedly, Humphrey rather reluctantly so) but with the chilly wet winter/spring weather in our new town, Humphrey's dislike of rain, and Oli's age/health, a warm dog raincoat was a welcome addition to our walking equipment. It is a custom fit, but created with enough versatility so that both Oli and Humphrey can wear it comfortably despite the differences in their build.

DIY Dog Coat with Popped Collar and Leash Opening

This DIY dog coat is comfy, cosy, quick dry, and custom sized to fit both Oli and Humphrey.  It's constructed with a sports fleece outer (tracksuit/hoody type material) and a polar fleece inner, and I included recycled high-visibility strips on the collar, leash hole shield, and belly closure bands. Our winter days can be rather dark and dreary, so a little extra visibility can be a good thing. It has a popped collar to keep the neck snug without getting in the way of movement or causing an annoyance around the ears.  The leash hole allows easy access and use with our double loop and large collars, and the shield helps buffer that gap.

Measuring for Dog Coats and Customising a DIY Pattern

Shivers, furfriends! Winter in our new town is a wet and chilly season of short grey days, and spring can be rather soggy and squishy, too. I wanted our jackets to be comfortable, durable, washable, and sized so that they could be worn by either dog (similar, but Oli is longer and wider).  They also needed to be compatible with our leashes and collars. The coats themselves are fairly simple, but the added features I wanted made things trickier, so I decided to create a warm weather-resistant dog jacket with sport fleece and polar fleece and then replicate the design using the more expensive and less sewing-friendly softshell for a waterproof dog jacket. I'll be sharing both in follow-on, but first up, a few important points of preparation, whether you are shopping or DIYing a dog coat.

Mini Dress Shirt DIY Dog Bandana

To finish this week's mini series of recycled dress shirt fabric/part DIYs for dogs, it's a miniature dress shirt dog bandana. Because why not?  This bandana looks like my husband's favourite work shirts (it's made from one of them, after all), right down to the miniaturised chest pocket. Now the boys can look just like their Dad.  Hehehe. 

Recycled French Cuff DIY Dog Bow Ties

When I cut old clothes apart for materials, I usually try to salvage as much useful fabric as I can, any miscellaneous items as I think may be usable, then relegate the dregs to rags and/or scrap.  After dissecting the recent batch of dress shirts (have you seen our recycled dress shirt pillow cases?), I was left with a pile of french cuffs. Whilst sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter and fiddling with one in my hand, a light bulb clicked. They were not only a similar size to the rectangles that I would cut for making a bow tie, but also pre-stiffened similar to how I would use interfacing (or batting) in a bow tie. I folded one over and into an accordion. Sure enough, it looked almost perfect, except for the ragged cuffline cut. I decided to sew a test bow, and loved it so much I may have gotten a little carried away making bows...

No-Sew DIY Dog Bows and Bow Ties

Whilst making my no-sew recycled dress shirt dog bandanas, I couldn't resist making a bow with some of the extra material. Bows and/or bow ties are quick crafts, although attachments for dog collars can sometimes be a little trickier. We have some awesome bow tie projects coming up (including what may be my favourite upcycle thus far!), but to keep this bow project totally now-sew, we'll be showing a couple of simple attachment options.

No-Sew DIY Dog Bandanas with (Cheat!) Finished Edges

No sew? No problem! These no-sew DIY dog bandanas look almost as good as the real thing! I prefer to sew my bandanas as it's very quick and easy with a sewing machine; however, if you don't sew or don't have/use a sewing machine, there are some sneaky ways to make a cheaters version. 

Dress Shirt Dog Collars (Plus How to Adjust Collar Size)

We're starting September with a special week long mini-series using materials salvaged from old shirts (the same shirts as were cut apart to make our "Pillow Daddy" recycled dress shirt cushion covers) for a combination of sew and no-sew projects. For years, I've had the occasional giggle from putting one of my husband's laundry-bound shirts onto Oli (and now Humphrey), buttoning the collar and leaving the shirt flapping like a Daddy-scented cape. :) When the time came to cut apart some old shirts, of course I was going to keep the collars for the dogs. Hehehe... How cute do they look in this Father's day photo, recently shared on our Facebook page?

DIY Personalised Dog Party (or Anytime!) Bandanas

Oh those faces! I love these two cuties to bits, but like most siblings, they are suitably unimpressed when Mom dresses then in matching outfits for a posed photo. Haha! I refer to them as milestone mugshots. Our boys still have their reversible birthday dog bandanas (love these!), but I made new any-occasion personalised bandanas and created an extra for Humphrey's new little (no longer so little) bestie, puppy pal Cooper.

DIY Custom Iron-Ons with Two Colour Shadow Effect Lettering

This post has been created in collaboration with our partner blog Creativity Unmasked.  With Mother's Day coming up in a few weeks and Father's Day not long after for those of you up north (it is in September here), we're sharing our custom heat transfer vinyl pet parent t-shirts. I made these first when I got my Cricut as a test for cutting size (little Dalmatian dots) and iron-on resilience. The bright blue shirts were bought as part of our dog vision walkies wardrobe changes, so they were the perfect target for some pet parent territorial marking. 

DIY Chinese New Year Dog Bandana (Free Cut File Download)

Year of the dog? Every year is the year of the dog! This DIY dog bandana uses lucky red along with accents of gold and black for a festive colour scheme.  The bold colours work beautifully together and the bandana looks great without the added iron-on embellishment, but we've also create a custom design that can be used to create an iron-on design with heat transfer vinyl using a Cricut or similar. Here's the DIY details including options for adapting the bandana to your own style and free cut files if you'd like to use our design.  It used to drive me crazy when DIY posts only suited people with cutting machines, so even though I am now a very happy Cricut owner, I will still try to ensure that the DIY posts we share here on our blog have variations that work for people crafting without cutters. 

Easy DIY Holiday Scarves for Matchy Matchy Family Photos!

I set myself the challenge this year of trying to get a furfamily Christmas photo.  Our dogs love posing solo, but are definitely not interested in posing together as you would have seen in a few funny shares here on the blog and our social media over the years.  Like typical kids being forced to pose for pictures by Mom, and all the more grumpy faces if they are (gasp!) forced to pose in matching outfits.  The horror!  Add the cat to the mix and it's total chaos. 

DIY No-Sew Ugly Christmas Sweater Dog Bandana

Let's face it...this handsome spotty little elf would be cute in anything, even an ugly Christmas sweater, or ugly Christmas sweater bandana as the case may be.  In our part of the world, it's far too hot for a holiday jumper and even in colder areas it's expensive with big dogs, like ours, to buy or embellish a doggy sweater for the once or twice a year that they might wear it. This no-sew DIY doggy bandana is an easy and inexpensive way to rock the holiday ugly sweater party. Bonus points if you make yourself a matching t-shirt. Please share photos with us! Hehe!

DIY Fringed Flannel Dog Bandana with Accent Trim Neck Tie

Matching blanket scarves for you and your pup? Why not! I have to confess that I'm not a huge fan of fringes. Whether its scarves, blankets, carpets, whatever, I find myself always fussing and smoothing to try and tame unruly strands into orderly obedience.  Buuuut when I saw this pretty plaid flannel on the clearance rack of my local craft shop, I simply had to buy some, and it was just begging to be fringed.  My compromise is that there is no fiddly fringing in the knot area thanks to the accent neck trim.

DIY Reversible Dog Bandana with Accent Trim Neck Ties

This pawesome dog bandana DIY is fully reversible and deceptively easy to sew. It is a simplified version of our fully bound bandana that skips the side trim on the triangle, eliminating corner turns which makes this a fancy looking bandana which requires only basic machine sewing skills. In all honesty, it's almost as easy as a basic reversible bandana, but that's a matter of personal preference and doggone great style. Choices, choices... On the subject of which, this bandana is a starry combo of red, whites, and blues in honour of our fab furfriends celebrating the Fourth of July next week but not so over-the-top that it wouldn't work for many other fancy dress occasions or just general wear, like our Canada Day dog (and cat!) bandanas. Woofs and meow!

DIY Fancy Dress Dog (and Cat!) Bandanas with Trim + Ties

These pretty red and white bandanas were created for our boys for Canada Day, but they can do double duty for general wear as well special red and white events like Valentine's Day or Christmas holidays. I even made a mini-bandana for Tiger, although his doesn't have a monogram iron-on as it's much smaller.  Fun fact: Tiger was born in Canada, and has had a rather well-travelled life for a rescue cat!

This DIY is easily adapted to other colour schemes, or for our Canadian readers, you can go full maple for an extra special Canadian version by using pattern fabrics, a maple leaf iron-on (not readily available down here!), or stamp your own design. If you have a computer controlled cutter, like our Cricut, you can create a custom iron-on, but you can also hand cut heat transfer materials.