Felt-Covered Headband Refashion

Just when I thought inspiration will never come again... it did. 

I stayed home from work yesterday because I wasn't feeling well and was still too tired from the trip my family took last weekend (more on that later). I decided to start looking over Andrea's clothes, shoes and other stuff to see what she will need when she starts pre-school this June. I still haven't repaired her bow holder since some of the glue holding the ribbons gave out so her clips and ribbons are being stored in a box. I opened that box and was surprised to see that she doesn't have a lot of clips anymore. Most of the stuff in the box looks old and worn already. And I realized it has been a while since I last made her anything new.

I remembered some clips and headbands we saw at the mall a couple of months ago which I thought were really cute but didn't buy, even though they were really cheap, because I knew it was so easy to make them. I already have all the materials needed. The headbands were just covered with felt with some very simple felt flowers attached. So yesterday, I sat down to finally work on it.

Instead of using a new headband, I decided to get some more use out of an old favorite headband of Andrea's that was already falling apart.

For the rest of the materials:

• A plastic headband, old or new, width will depend on how wide you want your headbands.
• Felt, in different colors
• Sewing machine
• thread
• scissors
• Glue gun and glue stick
• Velcro
• Embellishments: fabric flowers, ribbons, beads, etc
• OPTIONAL: pinking shears

STEP 1: If you are using an old headband, strip down all embellishments until all you have is the plastic headband. This is how mine looked like after I removed all that pink:

STEP 2: Measure the length of your headband and cut 2 strips of felt of the same length. The width of the felt strips must be at least 1 inch wider than the widest part of your headband.

Optional: You can taper both ends of the felt strips like I did since most headbands are shaped that way.

STEP 3: Hold the 2 strips together and sew along both sides to create a casing for the headband. Make sure that your headband will fit inside this casing.

STEP 4: Insert the headband inside the felt casing and trim the sides of the felt to make it look even after sewing. OPTIONAL: You can use pinking shears when you trim the sides if you want a zigzag edge.

STEP 5: Cut 2 small pieces of dark-colored felt. The pieces should be the same width as both ends of the headband. Wrap each piece on both ends of the headband, from inner side to outer side, to close the opening and apply hot glue to secure.

STEP 6: I want to be able to change the embellishments on the headband so I glued one the rough side of the Velcro on one side of the headband.

STEP 7: Make the embellishments, and apply the softer side of Velcro on all embellishments (using softer side of the Velcro on all embellishments will make them easier to store since they won't snag).

The possibilities are endless... here are some I made yesterday:

Fabric flower made with some scrapbooking flowers and brad :)

Felt flower that looks like the one attached to the headband I saw at the mall that inspired this project

A felt owl like the one I made here.

And I have this crocheted flower from last year where instead of gluing it directly to a clip, I also used Velco to attach it to a clip. Thanks to that, I can also use this on Andrea's headband.

Andrea was at my mom's and was not available for pictures so I had to  model her headband :P

The felt owl, attached to the headband.

I have several embellishments for different projects where I used Velcro... like these pearl bows for my shoes:

I don't have the shoes anymore but I kept the pearl bows since they can be used on some clips. The bows are attached to the shoes using Velcro too, so they can also be used on the headband :)

Hope this gives you some inspiration for your kids for this coming school year (be it June, like here, or another month)!

I am linking to the following parties:

Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do |  CraftOManiac Monday at CraftOManiac | Made by You Monday at Skip to My Lou | Market Yourself Monday at Sumo's Sweet Stuff | A Round Tuit at Creating My Way to Success | Making Monday Marvelous at C.R.A.F.T | Take-a-look Tuesday at Sugarbee Crafts | Handmade Tuesday at Ladybug Blessings | Sew Cute Tuesday at Creative Itch | Show Me What Ya Got at Not JUST a Housewife | Tuesday Confessional at Confessions of a Stay at Home Mommy |