Hi guys! My other Upcycling Challenge post was getting a little long so I thought I’d post this FREE headband pattern in a new post to organize things a bit better.
These headbands take about 10 minutes to make and are the perfect project to use up all those tiny bits and pieces of fabric leftover from your main project. This headband has exposed elastic because it’s slimmer at the nape of the neck and the rubbery bits inside the elastic grip the hair and hold the headband into place. Girly has straight, fine hair and the bulk of the fabric covered headbands makes a weird lump and they always slide right out of her hair. So I eliminated that and left the elastic exposed. Elastic comes in a variety of colors nowadays (fold over elastic options are vast and FOE works well for this project).
Materials:
- FREE Reversible Headband pattern piece (for Child and Adult sizes)
- Scrap of main fabric (about 4″x13″)
- Scrap of reverse fabric (about 4″x13″)
- Scrap of fusible interfacing (about 4″x13″)
- Scrap of elastic (about 3-6″)
Instructions:
- Cut out all pieces. You will have 2 headband pieces, 1 interfacing piece and 1 piece of elastic.
- Press interfacing to the wrong side of main headband print (it doesn’t matter which print you choose to be your “main” print).
- Lay your 2 headband pieces right sides together. Slide your elastic into one end of the headband. Pin.
- Starting at the short end opposite of the elastic, sew around the long curved edge, the short end with the elastic and the other long curved edge. Keep the elastic-free short end open.
- Clip corners and seam allowance around the curves.
- Turn right side out. Press.
- Now tuck the raw edge up inside the open bit of the headband piece.
- I like to try the headband on and measure exactly how much elastic needs to show in the back. Wrap your headband around your head (or the head of whoever it is being made for) and mark where your elastic meets the headband. I like to stretch the elastic every so slightly so it hugs the head and stays on better.
- Slide the free end of the elastic into the open part of your headband up to the mark you just made on the elastic.
- Sew the open end of the headband, securing the elastic.
- Sew the opposite end of the headband, making the project symmetrical and reinforcing the elastic.
- Enjoy!!!
I love making these headbands for birthday presents or whenever I have a lot of little scraps to use up. I hope you enjoy making these as much as I do!
When I was approached to participate in the kick off week blog tour, I had mixed feelings. I don’t like upcycling when it’s needlessly done (I’m looking at everyone who is taking gorgeous dressers and carelessly slapping on some paint and calling it “upcycling”). But I DO like upcycling when I think about the old garments as raw fabric. When I was in college, I would shop hardware stores for raw materials that could be made into something else. I watched a lecture by a prop maker once and he called it “shape shopping” and I knew other people did the same thing and they actually had a clever name for what I’ve been doing for years. So think of your soon to be upcycled garment (or sheet or whatever) not in terms of what it is now but what you can get out of it in the future.
I was on the fence about adding some patch pockets to the dress that I picked off of the top. They were super cute but I think they detracted from the overall design. I ultimately left them off.
Since I had a little extra fabric left over from sewing, I thought a headband to match the dress was the perfect accessory. It goes wonderfully with Girly’s little beehive hairdo! I’ve made a 
This is a pretty heated debate amongst some designers. I am firmly in the Uneven (or Natural) grading camp. Even grading is when all the sizes are perfectly spaced from the smallest to the largest size. For example, every size gets 1/4″ taller and 1/8″ wider (or something to that effect). This is great for adult sizing because that’s generally how adult measurements for each size works. But kids have periods where they grow really tall really fast and then fill out (lather, rinse, repeat). The husband guy worked in a human factors lab in school and would bring home all this really cool information about kid specific measurements and we’d geek out over it for a while. So, after getting really into the human factors side of making clothing, I decided that I would join in on the uneven grading side of the argument. Generally, kids have a big growth spurt between the ages of 3 and 4 so it makes total sense (to me) to have a bigger gap in sizes between those two than other sizes. Uneven grading creates more usable sizing right out of the box, without needing to tweak the pattern to fit your child.
