Ruffled Keychain Tutorial {or How Not to Loose Your Keys?}

I keep loosing my keys.  My key chain broke and it was nice and big so that I wouldn't loose them in my purse, or other places!  Anyways,  I decided to step up and finally make myself a key chain so my keys will quit getting lost in my purse, house, car, store... Do I really need to list all the places I keep loosing my keys?  I am lucky I keep finding them!

I started with 2 2.5 inches strips of fabric.  I measured them to be 4 times the width of my wrist...  So maybe half the length of you fabric?  I dunno just wrap it around your wrist.  I also used 1 smaller 2.5 inch strip about 4 inches long (I am VERY sure that I cut it down from what is pictured below!)  

The two longer strips I sewed along 2 edges the with right sides facing to create a long tube.  The shorter piece I folded up 4 times and stitched along one edge...  We will use this later.

Then I flipped the tube right side out and stitched along the edges again to keep it nice and flat!  NOTE TO SELF:  When doing this step... fold the ends IN about 1/4 inch before doing so!

Next I got a peice of elastic and wrapped it around my wrist like so!  This is how I wanted it to hang around my wrist when the key chain was done!

Next I laid the elastic down across the middle of my long fabric piece... just to see how far away from the edges my next stitches were going to be...

I stitched down the whole strip, along both sides, creating a casing in the middle for my elastic.

Above is a pic of the start of this....  SEE!!!  I should have folded my edges in like I mentioned earlier!  Here is where I realized my boo boo and had to unpick.  I think my unpicker would feel lonely if I didn't use it thought.  Best to keep every notion happy when sewing right?

Next I stick a saftey pin to one end of my elastic and started to shove it through.

I stopped a little from the end and...

stuck one end of my skinny piece from earlier into the hole.  Then stitched straight across, making sure to catch elastic, skinny fabric piece AND (since I hadn't done this earlier...) the two folded in ends of my fabric!

In case that was two confusing... check the pic above.  Left is this step!  After this I just kept pulling the elastic through, ruffling the fabric, and then did the same thing on the other side.

Next I matched up my two stitches I just made and ... stitched them together.  This created a loop out of the smaller fabric piece.  Then I threaded the circle key chain thingy-ma-jig onto the loopy!

See!  The extra long fabric and the elastic made a big ruffle!

And my keys look so cute hanging around my wrist right!  Now, hopefully this will help my lost keys problem!  (How much do you want to bet I loose them in my purse tomorrow!)