DIY Braided Dog Rope Toy

I love Pinterest. I can spend hours searching DIY home projects and recipes; I mean the pages are endless so anyone can spend countless amounts of time on there! In one of my searches I found a DIY dog toy. The concept of the dog toy is similar to those braided key chains every child knew how to make in the 90's. It seemed easy enough to make. The tutorials I saw online used pre-cut fleece fabric but I also saw one that used t-shirt strips- that one though didn't include a tutorial. I planned on making this toy. It was going to happen.
And then it didn't.
One day while I was at target I passed by a dog toy that was strikingly similar to the one I previously saw online. They were selling it for five dollars. FIVE WHOLE DOLLARS for something Stella would destroy in two days. I decided then I needed to make the toy.
Ricky wouldn't let me use any of his shirts for the first one I made so I dug through my drawer and found one I could use to make this trial toy. Using the same method used for the key chains I made the toy.
First I cut the shirt into four pieces and then cut those pieces so they weren't connected and became just long strips.

I then tied the end of the strips together tightly and began the weaving/braiding process. I followed this method:

When you pull the strips tightly together make sure you're pulling the top and bottom together and then the right and left, this ensures that it's going to be straight and all loops are tight. When I finished the weaving I tied all of pieces together in another knot.

Stella absolutely loved this toy! I was thrilled considering it was easy and free! She kept it around for three or four days before it was completely destroyed. I went on to make another one this same way. Then Ricky came around to donating a couple of his shirts to the "Free toys for Stella fund." Both of these shirts happened to be black polo shirts so I decided to try to make a larger one. I cut each shirt into a single, long strip. I then cut each of those strips in half. I used the same process from there. The final product could use some work. The width was larger, almost double the size, but the length wasn't much longer. It was hard to tie the ends off, so they aren't as uniform. I think this might be because the material of the shirts, not the length or size. Nonetheless Stella loves it and free definitely beats out any store bought toy prices.