True Blue Front

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Front View of the True Blue Collar

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This large dog collar will fit necks from 14″ to 20″ inches and is 1″ wide.

•Lightweight nylon webbing for strength, durability and resistance to mildew.
•Quality quilting cotton sewn on with cotton/polyester blend thread.
•Double stitched stress points.
•Cast Nickel D-ring designed for use in dog collars
•Contoured Acetal side snap buckle for long life and fade resistance.
•Nylon adjuster and size guard.
•Made in my smoke free (but not dog free) home

Price: $18.95

Carol held this as a fundraiser for the Eastern Canada French Bulldog Club, and French Bulldog Rescue. They raised quite a bit of money thanks to the generosity of all the sponsors

I got an email from Hope of Golly Gear saying she won one of my collars in the silent auction! Hope and I “met” when I found her blog the The Golly Log. Hope has a dog named Dax and I knew immediately I needed to read this blog. Dax is named after Dax from Star Trek and my dogs are named with Star Trek names… too funny!

Anyway, Hope sent me this awesome picture of Dax in her new collar!

I love this stuff!  I’ve wanted to make collars out of it for a while, but admittedly, I’ve been gun shy…

I always prewash my fabrics.  It solves a lot of problems later.  So I tossed the brocade in with some other fabrics that needed a spin and went with the shortest cycle since my machine doesn’t have a gentle cycle.

This little voice in my head says “maybe you should pink those edges on the brocade… or zig zag around them or at least  put the brocade in a lingerie bag.”.. but nooooo…

What came out was a giant tangled mess.  Oh my gawd..  it took me 10 minutes to carefully trim all the fraying edges away from each other… I was so afraid I’d snip the fabric.

Behold… the blob of remains.

The Brocade that Ate Manhattan

Fortunately, I saved the fabric.. I still have plenty to work with.. I lost about 1/2 an inch on either edge..
Lesson learned, huh?

You can win free stuff!

Um. .. including one of my collars!

Enter to win.

Do it..

Do it now!

I put the d-ring there for Agility people. I know quite a few use a slip lead only for agility trials. I thought it was a neat idea. What do you think?

What do you think? Should I start making martingales on a regular basis? I’ve had some practice now and I’m really starting to get a feel for them.

Click the pic for a full sized image.

That collar she is wearing is a custom order. Her Mom, Kendra sent me the fabric and I made it up for her.

I have to thank Kendra. I had been putting off working with martingales.. they can be kind of a pain in the neck. (no pun intended). But this was special to her.. so I gave it a shot. After making quite a few of them for practice, I made one for MY dogs to see how it worked.. then one for Lora since I had more of the Bones and Hydrants fabric than I could shake a stick at and then felt confident enough to put my rotary cutter to the little bit of this amazing fabric that Kendra was able to find.

See, it matches Basja’s pack, and Kendra had a collar made out of this same fabric, made by someone else.. but it didn’t hold up. So now, she’s matchy matchy again.. and I love it!

I took it in my head to try and advertise on a site that shall remain nameless. I thought it might be fun to send one of my collars in for review.

Now, I’ve done this in the past. Teresa from the Pet Sit USA blog has reviewed one of my collars.. and Lora can’t seem to stop herself. I think I need to start a support group. LOL!

But this site was more for the froo froo dogs.. which if I had looked.. I mean really looked, I would have seen this and realized that this is just not my crowd. Fashion plate and Luxury and Fluff are not for me.

I got a very pleasant response from the site owner with the suggestion that my collars don’t fit their clientele.. and she is right.. they don’t..

After I got over my initial, well PPLLLLLLPPPPFFFFTTTT! to you to! response. I thought about it for a bit. She is definatlely right.. and I’m totally cool with that.

Her suggestion was to consider working with:
* more luxurious fabrics? and/or
* stainless/chrome hardware? and/or
* a more “corporate” storefront?

It was also suggested that most of her clientele look for handsewn items to be more luxurious than what you can find in the store.

Well, here is what I think.

I’m no princess.. and neither are my dogs. Some dogs to get all pampered and powdered but not here.. and not me.

I have mascara.. it’s 10 years old. I color my hair.. for fun. I recently went back to contact lenses so I can not worry about getting hit in the face in Karate class. My hair is as short as I can make it an still look presentable at work. Otherwise, I’d shave my head. This is me.

I have punk goth jewelry that I can only wear out once in a while. I like sneakers and work boots and flannel.. I like function over form.

This is me.. these are my dogs… this is my work. My craft.. and someone actually referred to my collars as art… I don’t get it.. but I appreciate it.

My collars are for the “every dog”..they are the button down shirt with jeans and cowboy boots. You can toss them in the wash when your dog rolls in mud. You can wear them in the practice ring, the rally ring, the obedience ring, to the vet, to your Aunt Martha’s house, to the store, in the woods, in the yard, in the pool, in the pond, etc etc.. and they look fabulous.

This is me.. these are my dogs.. these are my collars.

And I’m damn proud of it.