The Art of Sewing a Headband: A Step-by-Step Guide

Shaking out the fabric is the best way to start, as you have what's kind of a double-sided tube here. The goal is to sew around this little area, leaving a small one-inch opening. To do this, take your machine and put it under your foot, with the fabric opening facing upwards. Start sewing about halfway through the seam, using a stretchy stitch that's suitable for the fabric type. It can be challenging to work in such a small space, so it's essential to go slowly and adjust frequently as needed.

As you sew around the curved area, try to keep the fabric taut, but not too tight, as this can cause distortion. If you find that one inch is not enough room for you to turn the headband right-side out, make your gap larger by leaving an inch and a half opening. This will give you sufficient space to work with.

Once you've completed sewing around the curved area, it's time to turn the headband right-side out. To do this, carefully cut along the opening, being mindful of any seams or stitches that may be too close to the edge. Then, use a needle and thread to sew the opening closed, working quickly and precisely to minimize the visible stitching.

For a more permanent solution, use your machine's straight stitch to sew the opening shut. You can also add a few backstitches at the beginning of the seam to secure it in place. Turn the headband over and inspect your handiwork – you should now have a neat, closed opening that won't be noticeable when wearing the finished product.

Incorporating Additional Features: Ties and Knots

One idea for adding visual interest to your headband is by incorporating ties or knots. Cut a line of fabric about two inches wide, then tie it around the center of the headband with a knot. This creates a simple yet stylish closure that adds texture and dimension to the design.

Another approach involves using scraps of fabric to create tie-ends for your headband. Simply cut a rectangle of fabric, ironing in the sides as you go. Wrap the fabric around the headband and sew the opening shut. Alternatively, you can use two rectangles of fabric, one slightly larger than the other, to create a faux tie that can be tied through a loop at the back of the headband.

Design Experimentation: Faux Ties and Surfboard-inspired Headbands

For a more artistic take on the headband design, try creating a faux tie by cutting two rectangles of fabric. Ironing in the corners creates a rounded shape that resembles a surfboard. Simply wrap the fabric around your headband and sew it shut at the end.

Alternatively, you can use this same technique to create a miniaturized version of a surfboard-inspired design. Cut out small shapes from the fabric, then attach them to the headband using a needle and thread or a few strategically-placed stitches. The result is a whimsical, ocean-inspired headband that's sure to make a statement.

Tips and Tricks for Sewing a Headband

When working with stretchy fabrics, it's essential to use a machine that can handle the material effectively. A stretchy stitch is usually the best option, as it allows for more flexibility and precision when sewing around curves.

It's also crucial to keep your fabric taut but not too tight, as this can cause distortion or puckering. If you're having trouble managing the fabric, try using a hoop or stabilizing material to keep everything in place.

Finally, don't be afraid to experiment with different techniques and designs – sewing is all about trial and error! With practice and patience, you'll develop your skills and create unique headbands that are truly one-of-a-kind.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm Dana welcome to mate everyday if you've ever been afraid to sew with knit fabrics and today is your day we're going to talk all about it and then we're going to show some really simple stretchy headbands so let's get started seung-ah's nits can be fun and actually pretty easy but I think where people get scared away is they think they don't have the right machine or they don't understand what knit fabrics are so let's talk about it knit fabrics are stretchy fabrics and they're called knits because of the way they're put together if you've ever knitted a sweater or a blanket with yarn and knitting needles this is done in much the same way only the needles are really tiny and the stitches are really tiny but if you stretch them you can actually see them there now this is different from woven fabrics which do not stretch this is like your standard quilting cotton and a lot of fabrics that you find at the fabric store and what's great about knits is that they're really comfortable to wear they fit on your body well they make great headbands which we're going to so you can find them at the fabric store you can find them online you could raid your drawer for old t-shirts that you're sick of or you can often find extra-large t-shirts in the clearance section at retail stores now let's talk about the way knit stretches there's two different kinds you can have two-way stretch which means the fabric stretches from side to side it doesn't stretch up and down and technically I think it should be called one way stretch but that's how the lingo goes the other kind is 4-way stretch which means it stretches from side to side and also up and down and oftentimes if it has four way stretch it has a little bit of spandex in there check some of your favorite t-shirts that you love to wear and you might notice on the tag that there's a small percentage of spandex in there if you want even more information than that I've written a book called fabrics a-to-z and in some countries it's referred to as the fabric selector and there's an entire section in this book about knit fabrics it goes through every different type you can find it online and you might check your local library now let's sell some knit fabrics on our machine what I have here is my standard baby LOC sewing machine and a serger and what's great about a serger is it creates a stitch that really stretches with your fabric now I'm not going to go into all the details about today because I really want to focus on how you can sew nets with your standard machine it's important when you're sewing with knits to use a stitch that stretches when you stretch your fabric if you sewed with a straight stitch it would just break the first time you put your clothing on I have a piece of scrap fabric here let me show you some stitches that will work and those that don't work we're gonna start with a straight stitch so you can see what happens put it in my machine so like I normally would other fabrics and watch when I stretch the fabric did you hear that our thread already broke that's going to make a horrible t-shirt so let's try something else most machines come with a zig zag stitch which is great sewing with knits so I can select mine over here and on my machine I can change the width if I want to be a really wide zigzag or more narrow I can make the zigzags really close or really spread apart you can do all those adjustments on your machine okay let's sew a zigzag okay there's my zig-zag stitch and as you can see it really stretches with my fabric now let's try another stitch most machines come with a variety of stitches some are decorative some are for practical sewing and if you're not sure what your stitches are for check your owner's manual my baby lock comes as a ton of stitches and in my book here it tells me exactly what the stitches what it does and what the best use is for that I can also see my stitches up here on the top of my machine and one day I just kind of played around with them and tried a few different stitches and I found one that I really liked for stretch fabrics and on mine is called an over casting stitch so I'm gonna select that here on machine it happens to be stitch 21 and let's see what it does it takes a little bit longer to sew this one but I find it against extra stretch to my stitch okay let's see how this looks there you go there is my overcast stitch as you can see it's really stretchy I think I'm going to use this for my head dance but first let me just show you how it looks on the serger also the cool thing about a serger is that it cuts your fabric as you go so you get a really nice polished edge and it so is really fast and look at that our surgery gives us a really stretchy stitch but we're going to make our hide beyond just is in our standard old machine here's what you need scraps of fabric that's it for headbands we need a kind of rectangle of fabric and I find that a good length for an adult headband is about 18 to 20 inches and for a child 17 to 18 inches now if your fabric is super stretchy you might just do the 18 inches if it's not quite as stretchy cut your length 20 inches now the width of the headband is totally up to you I find that a good average is about 6 and a half inches that leaves you with a 3-inch wide headband and if you find that that's still too wide you can always fold your head down in half like I've done here gives you two different looks so I'm going to cut my piece 18 by six and a half inches I'm using my rotary cutter my ruler and my cutting mat just lay them right here just like that the other thing you want to consider if you using stripes is which direction you want stripes to go on your headband do you want them going short stripes or do you want long stripes and cut your headband in the proper direction I'm going to have mine going lengthwise here okay now let's measure down 18 inches right here cut that one now I'm going to turn it and cut six and a half inches wide they're measuring down half inch one two three four five six okay here cut that one as well okay we're ready to sew with right sides of your fabric together take the whole piece and fold it in half then we're going to sew right down the side right here and I'm using that same stitch I showed you called my overcasting stitch because it's really stretchy for my headband so go to your machine do a little back stitch at the beginning and just sew all the way down you don't want to pull the fabric as you go just let the Machine feed the fabric for you when I made it to the end do a little back stitch and then show you a cool trick okay now I want to do is you want to kind of fold this thing in half with right side of the fabric touching each other so the easiest way to do that is to first turn the whole thing right side out like that and then turn it again inside out but only go half way and come down here so these seams are touching each other like this and I find that the best way is just shake that thing out what you have is kind of a double sided tube here and what we're going to do is sew around this little area leaving a small one inch opening now go over to your machine I'm still using that stretchy stitch this is kind of hard to do because the fabric opening is so small here put it under your foot and I'm starting about I don't know a half inch from where that seam was okay we're going to sew Oh play around as you go you just kind of want to turn your fabric keep going you may have to adjust frequently because that opening is so small so just go slowly and you'll make your way around when you get about to happen from that scene you want to stop so we leave an opening to turn the whole thing right side out if you find that one inch is not enough room for you to turn the thing right set out then make your gap larger leave an inch and a half okay what we're going to now is turn the whole thing right set up and just like that you're gonna be amazed we made a headband at least I hope you are these are really fun to do and they make great gifts for friends okay look at that we pretty much have our headband all we need to do is to close off that opening right here you could get really fancy and use a needle and hand so this little opening closed but I find it's just really fast to sew it off on your machine so for this little part I'm going to use a straight stitch right over here you typically won't even see this anyways once it's on your head do a little backstitch at the beginning and sew as close as you can to the edge which is to get that little opening closed okay and there you go it's really subtle you won't even notice it when it's on your head now turn the whole thing over and look at that we have a really cute headband and let me show you a few other options if you want to create some cool ties or knots in your headband here are some ideas that you can do one thing that I love to do with scraps of fabric is to cut a line of fabric down about I don't know two inches wide and when you yank on that it kind of creates this cool tie that you can use for a variety of things sometimes a tie it on gifts I like using a drawstring sacks and what's cool in a headband is that you can create a little tie that goes right around your headband and cinches it up very simple you didn't have to sew anything for this next headband over here what I did was cut a rectangle of fabric i ironed in the two sides I wrapped it around my headband and then all you have to do is sew that closed on the end and it hides underneath so you don't even see that seam for this headband I made a little faux tie just like this two rectangles of fabric nine by two inches what I'm going to do is round off those corners a little bit just fold it in half and you doing both at the same time and I'm just going to eyeball it kind of go around you can make it more pointy more wide just do whatever you want and now my fabric looks like this a miniature surfboard what I'm going to do is sew around leaving a small opening turn it right-side out and we'll be almost done I'm using a stretchy stitch again and I'm starting somewhere in the middle and start sewing so all the way around and leave about a 1 inch opening we need to the curves just go slowly so you don't stretch your fabric too much so if you stop lift your presser foot pivot and then keep going that's the best way to sew around circles or corners things like that okay I want to come back the other side I want to make sure that I leave that opening do a little backstitch cut my threads want to get back to the end I'm going to turn the whole thing right side out let's see how our little tie looks you can make your tie longer you make it wider whatever you want for your headband and there you go you have a little tie and you know what I'm not I'm going to sew that opening close because no one's ever going to see it once that's tied in a knot so let's see how it looks on our headband I'm going to tie it in the back here where that seam is because then it will hide it even more put under and tie it a little knot and look at that a cute little headband more ideas and tutorials check out my website made every day calm and for more information on sewing machines go to baby lock calm where it's all for the love of sewing I'll see you next timehi I'm Dana welcome to mate everyday if you've ever been afraid to sew with knit fabrics and today is your day we're going to talk all about it and then we're going to show some really simple stretchy headbands so let's get started seung-ah's nits can be fun and actually pretty easy but I think where people get scared away is they think they don't have the right machine or they don't understand what knit fabrics are so let's talk about it knit fabrics are stretchy fabrics and they're called knits because of the way they're put together if you've ever knitted a sweater or a blanket with yarn and knitting needles this is done in much the same way only the needles are really tiny and the stitches are really tiny but if you stretch them you can actually see them there now this is different from woven fabrics which do not stretch this is like your standard quilting cotton and a lot of fabrics that you find at the fabric store and what's great about knits is that they're really comfortable to wear they fit on your body well they make great headbands which we're going to so you can find them at the fabric store you can find them online you could raid your drawer for old t-shirts that you're sick of or you can often find extra-large t-shirts in the clearance section at retail stores now let's talk about the way knit stretches there's two different kinds you can have two-way stretch which means the fabric stretches from side to side it doesn't stretch up and down and technically I think it should be called one way stretch but that's how the lingo goes the other kind is 4-way stretch which means it stretches from side to side and also up and down and oftentimes if it has four way stretch it has a little bit of spandex in there check some of your favorite t-shirts that you love to wear and you might notice on the tag that there's a small percentage of spandex in there if you want even more information than that I've written a book called fabrics a-to-z and in some countries it's referred to as the fabric selector and there's an entire section in this book about knit fabrics it goes through every different type you can find it online and you might check your local library now let's sell some knit fabrics on our machine what I have here is my standard baby LOC sewing machine and a serger and what's great about a serger is it creates a stitch that really stretches with your fabric now I'm not going to go into all the details about today because I really want to focus on how you can sew nets with your standard machine it's important when you're sewing with knits to use a stitch that stretches when you stretch your fabric if you sewed with a straight stitch it would just break the first time you put your clothing on I have a piece of scrap fabric here let me show you some stitches that will work and those that don't work we're gonna start with a straight stitch so you can see what happens put it in my machine so like I normally would other fabrics and watch when I stretch the fabric did you hear that our thread already broke that's going to make a horrible t-shirt so let's try something else most machines come with a zig zag stitch which is great sewing with knits so I can select mine over here and on my machine I can change the width if I want to be a really wide zigzag or more narrow I can make the zigzags really close or really spread apart you can do all those adjustments on your machine okay let's sew a zigzag okay there's my zig-zag stitch and as you can see it really stretches with my fabric now let's try another stitch most machines come with a variety of stitches some are decorative some are for practical sewing and if you're not sure what your stitches are for check your owner's manual my baby lock comes as a ton of stitches and in my book here it tells me exactly what the stitches what it does and what the best use is for that I can also see my stitches up here on the top of my machine and one day I just kind of played around with them and tried a few different stitches and I found one that I really liked for stretch fabrics and on mine is called an over casting stitch so I'm gonna select that here on machine it happens to be stitch 21 and let's see what it does it takes a little bit longer to sew this one but I find it against extra stretch to my stitch okay let's see how this looks there you go there is my overcast stitch as you can see it's really stretchy I think I'm going to use this for my head dance but first let me just show you how it looks on the serger also the cool thing about a serger is that it cuts your fabric as you go so you get a really nice polished edge and it so is really fast and look at that our surgery gives us a really stretchy stitch but we're going to make our hide beyond just is in our standard old machine here's what you need scraps of fabric that's it for headbands we need a kind of rectangle of fabric and I find that a good length for an adult headband is about 18 to 20 inches and for a child 17 to 18 inches now if your fabric is super stretchy you might just do the 18 inches if it's not quite as stretchy cut your length 20 inches now the width of the headband is totally up to you I find that a good average is about 6 and a half inches that leaves you with a 3-inch wide headband and if you find that that's still too wide you can always fold your head down in half like I've done here gives you two different looks so I'm going to cut my piece 18 by six and a half inches I'm using my rotary cutter my ruler and my cutting mat just lay them right here just like that the other thing you want to consider if you using stripes is which direction you want stripes to go on your headband do you want them going short stripes or do you want long stripes and cut your headband in the proper direction I'm going to have mine going lengthwise here okay now let's measure down 18 inches right here cut that one now I'm going to turn it and cut six and a half inches wide they're measuring down half inch one two three four five six okay here cut that one as well okay we're ready to sew with right sides of your fabric together take the whole piece and fold it in half then we're going to sew right down the side right here and I'm using that same stitch I showed you called my overcasting stitch because it's really stretchy for my headband so go to your machine do a little back stitch at the beginning and just sew all the way down you don't want to pull the fabric as you go just let the Machine feed the fabric for you when I made it to the end do a little back stitch and then show you a cool trick okay now I want to do is you want to kind of fold this thing in half with right side of the fabric touching each other so the easiest way to do that is to first turn the whole thing right side out like that and then turn it again inside out but only go half way and come down here so these seams are touching each other like this and I find that the best way is just shake that thing out what you have is kind of a double sided tube here and what we're going to do is sew around this little area leaving a small one inch opening now go over to your machine I'm still using that stretchy stitch this is kind of hard to do because the fabric opening is so small here put it under your foot and I'm starting about I don't know a half inch from where that seam was okay we're going to sew Oh play around as you go you just kind of want to turn your fabric keep going you may have to adjust frequently because that opening is so small so just go slowly and you'll make your way around when you get about to happen from that scene you want to stop so we leave an opening to turn the whole thing right side out if you find that one inch is not enough room for you to turn the thing right set out then make your gap larger leave an inch and a half okay what we're going to now is turn the whole thing right set up and just like that you're gonna be amazed we made a headband at least I hope you are these are really fun to do and they make great gifts for friends okay look at that we pretty much have our headband all we need to do is to close off that opening right here you could get really fancy and use a needle and hand so this little opening closed but I find it's just really fast to sew it off on your machine so for this little part I'm going to use a straight stitch right over here you typically won't even see this anyways once it's on your head do a little backstitch at the beginning and sew as close as you can to the edge which is to get that little opening closed okay and there you go it's really subtle you won't even notice it when it's on your head now turn the whole thing over and look at that we have a really cute headband and let me show you a few other options if you want to create some cool ties or knots in your headband here are some ideas that you can do one thing that I love to do with scraps of fabric is to cut a line of fabric down about I don't know two inches wide and when you yank on that it kind of creates this cool tie that you can use for a variety of things sometimes a tie it on gifts I like using a drawstring sacks and what's cool in a headband is that you can create a little tie that goes right around your headband and cinches it up very simple you didn't have to sew anything for this next headband over here what I did was cut a rectangle of fabric i ironed in the two sides I wrapped it around my headband and then all you have to do is sew that closed on the end and it hides underneath so you don't even see that seam for this headband I made a little faux tie just like this two rectangles of fabric nine by two inches what I'm going to do is round off those corners a little bit just fold it in half and you doing both at the same time and I'm just going to eyeball it kind of go around you can make it more pointy more wide just do whatever you want and now my fabric looks like this a miniature surfboard what I'm going to do is sew around leaving a small opening turn it right-side out and we'll be almost done I'm using a stretchy stitch again and I'm starting somewhere in the middle and start sewing so all the way around and leave about a 1 inch opening we need to the curves just go slowly so you don't stretch your fabric too much so if you stop lift your presser foot pivot and then keep going that's the best way to sew around circles or corners things like that okay I want to come back the other side I want to make sure that I leave that opening do a little backstitch cut my threads want to get back to the end I'm going to turn the whole thing right side out let's see how our little tie looks you can make your tie longer you make it wider whatever you want for your headband and there you go you have a little tie and you know what I'm not I'm going to sew that opening close because no one's ever going to see it once that's tied in a knot so let's see how it looks on our headband I'm going to tie it in the back here where that seam is because then it will hide it even more put under and tie it a little knot and look at that a cute little headband more ideas and tutorials check out my website made every day calm and for more information on sewing machines go to baby lock calm where it's all for the love of sewing I'll see you next time\n"