How to secure a purse strap?

November 7, 2008 6:21 AM

What would be the best way for me to secure the strap on a purse/bag?

For my birthday, I received an awesome canvas bag. The strap is secured in place by a simple granny knot (picture here).

I'm worried that this will eventually come undone and the bag will go crashing to the floor. (I don't carry anything particularly heavy in it, but you never know.) What's the best way to ensure this does not happen?

I was thinking of maybe squirting hot glue into the center of the knot to bind it, but I am wondering if there's a better type of knot I could use, or a different technique.

(I'd like to avoid having to replace the strap with something else. Also, the strap is the perfect length for me now, so I'd also like to avoid any sort of technique that would make the strap length shorter.)

posted by Lucinda to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (8 answers total)

Best answer: Couldn't you just stitch it together, if it isn't already?
posted by Grither at 6:24 AM on November 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Looks like a simple overhand knot on the end. I would either take Grither's advice and put a few stitches through it or untie the knot and put a figure eight knot in it place.
posted by DJWeezy at 6:35 AM on November 7, 2008

First step- decide if it's a granny knot or a square knot. If it actually is a granny knot, replace it with a square knot; granny knots are no good at all.

Alternatively, consider the double fisherman's knot.

The hot glue probably won't hurt, but it probably won't really help, either.
posted by JMOZ at 6:50 AM on November 7, 2008

That looks like an overhand knot to me.

You either need a stopper knot of some sort, a figure of eight would be nice, or you could take the loose end and tie it back to the rest of strap, perhaps using something like two half hitches. Or sew it together (but you'd loose the adjustability of it if you did that).
posted by Helga-woo at 7:04 AM on November 7, 2008

If that's what I think it is (the strap passes through a loop and is then tied into a bulky knot to prevent it slipping back through the loop), you could untie the knot and tie/rivet/sew a ring onto it that's too big to slip through the loop. Voila, you now have someplace to clip your keys/mace/shrunken heads.
posted by fracas at 12:32 PM on November 7, 2008

Yup, that´s an overhand knot.

Just stitch through the part holding the strap into the strap.
posted by yohko at 12:45 PM on November 7, 2008

Response by poster: Yeah, I think stitching it would be the best way to deal with this. Thanks :)
posted by Lucinda at 7:51 PM on November 7, 2008

Response by poster: For anyone still reading this, I found this picture which shows that the two strap ends are supposed to be tied together (making the strap really really short). It was actually this way when my mother gave it to me, but she looked at it, thought "that can't be right" and untied it into its present condition.
posted by Lucinda at 8:39 PM on November 9, 2008