DIY Vintage Flour Sack Guitar Strap

My sister Hannah’s birthday was this past weekend. She is a hard gal to shop for, mostly because she is always saving up and buying big-ticket items, which makes it a little hard to get a store-bought gift for her that I feel she’ll get excited about. Hannah was lucky enough to get brains from dad, and the artsy fartsy gene from mom, so she’s smart and talented. One of Hannah’s main loves is music, and biggest spending weakness is musical instruments, specifically guitars. She is nineteen years old and has already acquired six guitars, two violins, and a ukulele. I always make Hannah gifts since she truly loves and appreciates handmade one of a kind items. This year I wanted to make her a guitar strap for her new guitar. She loved the camera strap I made for my mom for Christmas, so I knew she’d love a vintage flour sack patchwork strap. I had a great time picking out the fabric scraps and making it fit her style!

Here’s What You Need:

*Guitar Strap

*Fabric Scraps

*Sewing Machine and Coordinating Thread

*Self Healing Mat

*Rotary Cutter

*Ruler

*Straight Pins

*Iron and Ironing Board

Instructions:

The first thing you need to do is measure your strap and decide how many fabric pieces you need. Adjust the strap to its longest position and measure the width and the length. Mine was 2″ wide and 46″ long. I decided to make my strips 2.5×3″ and so I divided the 46″ length by 3″ which gave me 15.333, so I cut 16 pieces.

Lay out your self-healing mat and grab a fabric scrap. Mark it at 3″ and cut the strip to 3″, then turn it and cut the width to 2.5 inches. Repeat until you have 16 strips. Lay out your fabric pieces and decide which order you want them to be in. Stack them in order from the top to the end.

 

Set up your sewing machine. Take the top two fabric pieces and lay them right sides together where the top of the second piece lines up with the bottom of the first piece. You want your directional patterns to be going all in the same direction in your patchwork strip. Stitch across the bottom with a quarter-inch seam allowance.

Now take the third fabric piece and lay it on top of the second where the top of the third piece lines up with the bottom of the second piece and the right sides of both pieces are facing. Stitch across the bottom.

Continue stitching the fabric pieces together until you have sewn all 16 pieces and have a long row of patchwork.

Lay your patchwork strip face down on your ironing board and heat up your iron. Press open all of the seam allowances. Next, starting at one end, fold over the side by a half an inch towards the center back of the fabric patchwork strip. Iron the raw edge under all the way down one side and then back up the other.

Next, lay your guitar strap face up and lay out your patchwork strip matching the top of the strap to the top of the strip. Lay the patchwork strip face up where the seam allowances you pressed under are nicely concealed to the face of the strap. Turn under the raw edges at the top and bottom. Pin the patchwork strip to the guitar strap.

Now you are ready to stitch the fabric strip to your guitar strap. Topstitch down one long side of the strap close to the edge of the fabric. When you get to the end, keep your needle down in the fabric, lift up your presser foot and pivot. Put the foot back down and stitch across the bottom. Then pivot again and stitch up the other side. Pivot and Stitch across the other end. Make sure you back-stitch at the beginning and end. Snip excess threads. Now you are ready to rock!

Isn’t it fun! I think I may have to make another one with some more masculine fabric for my hubby this year. This was a super easy project. You can make it in under an hour too! What I love so much is how customizable it is. I am a nut for repurposing and I LOVE to use vintage fabric, but you could use any kind of fabric scraps you have lurking in your scrap stash. Have fun with it! I hope some of you guys will give this DIY a go, you’ll love it! It makes a great gift for your favorite musically gifted gal! I’ll be back next week with more fun! Until then…

Happy Crafting!