I had a lot of leftover fleece from sewing valentine hearts, so I figured out how to make braided doggy tug toys. It is super easy – no sewing involved. You basically just cut and braid. Here is a quick how-to. There are more photos from in between the step in my Flickr feed.

You’ll need some fleece. You can use up to 3 colors for each tug toy. Mine was leftover from another project.

Fold the fleece in half, selvage to selvage so you are cutting strips along the direction the fabric stretches (the selvage will be on the end of your strips, not on the length).

Cut a strip 3″ – 4″ wide. I went with 3.5″.

Repeat until you have three strips total.

Lay the strips lengthwise side-by-side. Fold them in to loose tubes at the middle so that the rough edges aren’t as noticeable when you start to braid.

Braid the middle 10″ or so of the strips. When you fold this in half, it will become the loop handle.

Fold the strips in half and line up the matching colors. If you are using all one color, just split the strips from each side into 3 groups of 2.

Start braiding tightly till the end. You can make it look neater by wrapping the pairs of strips around each other into a tube so you don’t see as many rough edges.

Tie the whole tug toy in a knot above the loose ends. I like to make the knot loosely but starting fairly high, then pull it down towards the end until it is nice and tight.

Trim the ends to make them even, and you are done!