The First Ever Crafty Friday

Right, Leah, 'cause you've never ever ever done a craft before on a Friday.

When deciding which topic I should cover on Fridays, there were a lot of things that sounded better than "Crafty Friday", but as with Thursday, I went for quality of content over titular alliteration. Rather than review pineapples and watermelon every Fruity Friday, or tell everyone how much I love scarves every Fashion Friday, I decided to go with something I know much better than fruit, fashion, or Feng shui.

As with most of this week, I'm going with something I did some time ago. I've been busy doing things like applying for jobs and beating Wii games lately and haven't had time for crafts or baking (Not true: I made a pie). :)

This week, I'm discussing t-shirt headbands. As you'll soon discover, making things out of old t-shirts is a great interest of mine. I think t-shirt fabric is really nice and it's stretchy so you can do so much with it. I found this idea originally on Cut Out + Keep, which is my favorite craft website. (You can search by ingredient, finished product, etc. A lot of the projects are just pictures, but if you find one with a "How-To" banner, there'll be directions... sometimes in understandable English.) I like to go to Cut Out + Keep for ideas, mostly. While looking around at some headband ideas, I came across this one. While she used denim, ribbon, and t-shirt for hers, I had a ton of t-shirt scraps leftover from my Christmas scarf extravaganza (that's probably another week's story), so I just used t-shirt. This gave me a less scruffy, more homogeneous look.

Here's a picture of the first one I made:

I actually did have some elastic, and it was really thin elastic (1/8" maybe?), so I took a piece twice as long as I needed and then stitched both ends to one side and looped the thread through the other side to stitch it on. I also made it longer than halfway around my head. I don't have great lengths of hair to hide the details of my headbands, so I went nearly to the bottom of my ears. You can just see the knot in the picture.

Whatever fabric you use, make sure to use a piece far longer than you want the finished product to be! I've made a few of these since and they've been too small for my head because the braided part wasn't long enough.

Happy Crafting!

Love and T-shirts,

LeahJoy