The Artful Camera

So my husband bought me a really nice camera for my birthday/ Mother's Day/ anniversary/ Christmas.  His comment was 'It took me 10 years, but I didn't forget."  He really is a keeper! 

So I have been having lots of fun with my new "toy."  And one of the things that I have found is that the camera straps that come with the camera are not very comfortable.  So after finding a tutorial on Pinterest about making your own camera straps, I decided that I could do this.  So I am going to make a camera strap to replace the one that came with the camera.  I don't like have the strap on all of the time, but it is nice when I don't have somewhere safe to put it down. 

So I am using a bunch of blue scraps left over from my sister's quilt and I am going to make 2' pineapple blocks and sew them together for the outside of the strap.  I am going to back it with some white flannel.  I decided  to use a layer of flannel as batting instead  of adding bulk with the regular batting.

This is the last piece of the second round 

 This was definitely an interesting project.  To begin with, the finished size of my blocks was 2 inches.  Needless to say, this means working with very small pieces of fabric and in very tight spacing.  To start off, I had seen a blog post about a lady (Connie from QuiltWorks in TX) who was making a quilt with blocks this size.  Now I don't have that much patience, but I do love tiny things.  So I decided to give it a go.  I will admit that my blocks only have 32 pieces while hers have over 40.  However I have three kids to keep out of my hair while I work.  This always makes life interesting.  It is also why I do a lot of my work like this after they are in bed.  ;)  After seeing her picture with a 2 block wide strip around her neck, I thought that these would be perfect for a camera strap.

Finished block

To begin I found a pineapple block layout and used my computer to shrink it down to the correct size.  Next, I used tissue paper cut down to about 4 inch pieces and laid the first one directly on my screen and traced the pattern onto the tissue paper with an ultra fine sharpy pen.  The next step was easy.   I used my rotary cutter to cut 3/4 inch strips of white and colored fabric.  I cut enough for about thirty, because I wasn't sure what would look good all laid out.  It took about 20 minutes to put each block together.  After the forth or fifth round I was able to sew the opposite sides before stopping to trim the seams and iron them.  If I hadn't done this it probably would have taken me another 5 to 10 minutes per block.  I laid them out so that the dark and light blocks alternated.

 As I finished blocks, I sewed them together.  This way I didn't have to worry as much about my youngest son trying to carry them off on me.  He does love to get the "skinny" on all of my projects.  I made a total of 15 blocks for this project.  After I got all of the blocks assembled, I then took 2 layers of white flannel, and pinned them to the back side of the blocks.  After I cut them down to the right size, I stitched an X shape with my machine over the center of each block.  This way I get the quilted appearance.  After I trimmed the flannel and the blocks down to the right width, I used double fold 1/4 inch bias tape to finish the edges off all nice and neat.  After I finished the strap itself, I sewed a large key ring to each end of the strap and added a swivel spring clip to that so I can clip the strap to my camera.   I have been using it now for a couple of weeks and I must say that I absolutely love it.