I have a Nikon D60 that I LOVE. I have a generic Nikon camera strap that I do not love. I've found dozens of adorable strap options for sale, and they are common on etsy and craft venues, but I decided I'd rather save the money and have a little fun customizing one for myself!
I decided that I would put cameras on my camera strap....that seems appropriate, right? If you prefer, at this step you can use any fabric that you wish for your strap, I just didn't have any that I liked, so I made my own! I spent some time sketching basic camera outlines. I then scanned the drawings in order to resize and format them on my computer (I do this for most of my projects - I prefer drawing by hand, but love having the ability to manipulate designs to fit for different uses). I decided how long to make the fabric portion of the strap and formatted a pattern of cameras to be printed on a chartreuse cotton fabric I had leftover from past projects. I used my favorite technique of backing fabric with freezer paper in order to run it carefully through my inkjet printer. In retrospect, this would have been a good project to do some sort of pre-treating of my fabric in order to waterproof somewhat, or to have used a different fabric printing technique. Over time, some of my cameras have become a little smudged due to my tendency to take pictures in the rain or while forging through a river.
Once printed, I set aside that piece of fabric to concentrate on creating the structural part of the strap. In order to attach the fabric portion of the strap to the body of the camera, I decided to mimic the design of my old nikon strap which uses 1/2" webbing, which is then locked with a plastic piece (which I recycled from that old strap). Unfortuantely, in all my mountains of craft supplies, I didn't have any 1/2" webbing. So I divided a piece of 1" nylon webbing and melted the raw edge with a lighter to prevent fraying.
I wanted the fabric portion of the strap to have some bulk to it to provide a nice grip and some security to my camera. For this I used a piece of a canvas dropcloth cut wide enough to fold over twice (remember to fold the raw edges in!) I then carefully positioned the webbing into the ends of the cloth strap and ran two rows of stitching through the center of the four layers of canvas and firmly attaching the webbing to the fabric portion of the strap - an important step in securing the safety of my camera. I ran an additional 2 rows of stitching parralell to the center ones in order to stiffen the canvas, and I liked the look visually on the cavas of the additional seams.
In the final steps, I attached the printed camera fabric to the canvas strap by turning the raw edges under and doing a simple top stitch along the edge of the printed fabric. I added some dark gray fabric to finish off the fabric strap. I copied the shape and stitching pattern of my original Nikon strap. This step is unnecessary to the structure of the strap, although it does make me feel better to have the additional stitching attaching the webbing to the strap. These end pieces could be made out of a variety of different materials - or you could think of a different way entirely to attach your camera/webbing to your strap, but I know I feel confident letting my camera dangle from my arm on this!
