Saturday, March 26, 2011

Interchangable Fabric Flower Headband Tutorial!

Seriously, how cute is this headband?! (As an aside, I learned that it's incredibly difficult to take a picture of your own head and that when you make multiple attempts to get a good picture while sitting in the school pick up line, the other parents look at you funny as they try to figure out what it is that you are up to!)


I found wire headbands in the jewelry making section of Hobby Lobby. They had black and silver. Bonus! These headbands are actually fairly comfortable and won't make your head feel like the headband is trying to squeeze your brains out of your ears after wearing them for a couple of hours.

To make the headbands you'll need:
  • headbands
  • fabric scraps (for the red and white headband I used a jersey knit and for the orange and turquoise headband I used a calico)
  • velcro
  • felt
  • hot glue gun
  • beads or buttons and needle and thread (optional)

First, cut your fabric into strips. I make mine about 1 1/2 inches wide. The strips don't have to be cut straight - you won't be able to tell once you've made them into a flower. Make the strips long (like length of the fabric long). Once you're happy with the size of the flower, you can cut the excess off.

Fold the strip in half and make a knot at one end.


Hold the knot in your hand (the short end of the fabric facing down). Put a dab of hot glue on the side of the knot and attach the long part of your tail to it. This is the start of your flower.


Now, give the fabric a half twist. (The fold of the fabric strip will be facing down and the two cut ends will be facing up). Glue to the knot/flower. Give the fabric strip another half twist (now the fold will be facing up and the two cut ends will be facing down). Glue. Continue to twist and glue until the flower is a size you are happy with.
Tip: If you put the dab of hot glue toward the bottom of the flower, you'll be less likely to see the glue on the top of the flower. Don't use a lot of glue. A small dab is all you'll need and will prevent it from oozing up to the top of the flower.


You should end up with something that looks like this. Tuck the end underneath the flower and secure with a little bit of hot glue.


Once you've made all your flowers, cut the tail of the knot off. Now you can embellish with beads and buttons if you'd like. I use seed beads and hand sew them on. A thimble comes in handy for this part! Now, play around with the flowers to find an arrangement that you like.


Cut a piece of felt in a rough oval shape that is slightly smaller than the arrangement of flowers that you've decided on. Glue the flowers to your felt oval.


Now that your flowers are glued to your felt oval, cut a small piece of velcro and glue it on the back of the felt. I like to put the soft side of the velcro on the flowers, but it doesn't really matter.

The other side of the velcro gets hot glued to the headband.


Cut a small piece of felt the same size as the velcro piece and glue it to the back of the velcro. Your headband will be sandwiched between the velcro and the felt.


Now you can attach your fabric flowers to your headband!


Voila! A cute, interchangeable fabric flower headband!

(That's my mini me in the background. She wanted to be in the picture, too!)

2 comments:

MBR said...

cute stuff! new follower from what mama wants giveaway. michelle sometimesuwin.blogspot.com

Rachel@oneprettything.com said...

Great idea and it's super cute! Thanks so much, I'll be linking to this.