Choker Necklace Made With Denim and Headlight Vinyl

Among the many materials from projects that I have scattered and abandoned, also for work, it occurred to me to renew my cats' collars (reusing the same cat safety clasp) with jean fabric (because it is resistant) and with colorful vinyl that I have at home to renew some windows. It turns out that the vinyl for windows and headlights has an adhesive side that goes well with fabrics.

After making the collars, it occurred to me to make one for myself, to be in line with my cats. I made a bracelet for my partner with one of the leftover pieces and I plan to make another one with another piece, only this time I wanted to wear a choker necklace. 

I hope you like it.

• Tape measure
• Denim fabric
• Tailor's chalk
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Sewing needles or sewing machine
• Polyester thread
• Vinyl headlights
• Pliers
• Costume jewelry items:
• 2 iron ribbon ends
• 4 jump rings
• 1 lobster clasp
• 1 head pin
• 1 decorative stone
• 1 chain
• Optional: ribbon, or something to flip binding

In this step, with the help of the tape measure, place tape measure around the neck in a comfortable location; not too tight for us.

My neck gives a circumference of about 32 cm but I will add an extra 1.5 cm for comfort because I don't like it so tight.

In this step, we will measure a piece of fabric about 33.5 (1.5 cm extra from the neck measurement) long, but I will cut 37 cm (to test the length at the neck and reduce it until I am sure I am comfortable with that measurement) and 4.2 cm wide.

I want my denim strip to be about 1.4 cm wide, if we multiply this wide by 2, add twice the thickness of the fabric (0.2 cm), plus the seam allowance (0.5 cm) multiply by 2, that will be the width size of fabric we need to cut. In my case, it gives about 4.2 cm.

Note:

Cut width of fabric to make a sewn bias binding = 2 x Expected wide of the fabric tube + 2 x Fabric thickness + 2 x Seam allowance.

• Fold the fabric from the previous step on its front side in half.
• Then, sew with a 0.5 cm seam allowance.
• To flip the strip, we will insert a ribbon or string inside the strip we just sewed, and at one of the ends, we sew the string and the ribbon together.
• Then, we will pull the ribbon to flip the denim strip and we will be left with the front side of the fabric. We cut the piece of fabric that is sewn to the cord that we use to flip.

Note:

We can iron the strip we just sewed to give it a better finish.

In this step, we measure a strip of headlight vinyl of the same length as the denim strip of the previous step, and 1 cm wide.

We mark it with a pencil and cut it.

Place the strip of headlight vinyl cut in the previous step, and place it in the center of the denim strip.

Then sew in a straight line, each edge of the denim strip to the headlight vinyl; between 1mm to 2mm from the edge of the vinyl strip.

• Once the strips are sewn, we proceed to apply the ribbon ends on each side of the denim and vinyl strip.
• They are placed by putting the strips inside and pressing with the pliers.
• Then we add a small jump ring on each side of the terminal rings, in one of these two jump rings, we leave it open to put the lobster clasp. The other jump ring, we add a larger jump ring, which will be used to close the choker to our size.
• If we want to lend it or give it to someone and we don't know their neck size, we can add a chain to make it an adaptable choker. We add this chain to the big jump ring that was originally used to close the choker, at the end of the chain, we can put a decorative stone in a head pin, so as not to leave the chain loose.

And this is the result. It can be varied with different types of fabric. In the last two photos, it is a strip that was left after making a pet collar for one of my cats; I plan to make a bracelet with that piece.