How to Sew a Headband

I'm gonna show you how to make a really quick, simple headband, which is such a fun project to do, especially in the summer. But really in all seasons. It takes just a little bit of fabric and essentially can reflect whatever mood you're in, whatever you're wearing at the moment. It can reflect your personality. It's such a fun, quick project. So for this headband, we're not even gonna be using elastic. This is a no-elastic headband. Instead, all you need is a fat quarter of fabric. These are some examples of fat quarters that you have probably seen in the fabric store. They're usually folded like this or like this. Beautiful piles of colorful fabric. And I tend to reach for them and buy them 'cause they're so beautiful and I want that fabric. So I'll just buy a fat quarter, because it tends to be anywhere between, you know, $1.50 to $3, depending on where you're purchasing it. So in case you don't know what a fat quarter is, a fat quarter is generally used by quilters and it's called a fat quarter because there is such a thing as a thin quarter or a skinny quarter. And when you unfold the fabric, this is how big it is. This is a quarter of a yard of fabric. If you cut a yard on a bolt and unfolded it and cut it into corners a little bit like a pie or the quarters of a clock, this would be a fat quarter. One quarter. A skinny quarter is when you go to the fabric store and you ask for a quarter of a yard of fabric. They cut it from fold to selvedge and it is a skinny quarter of fabric. And the reason why there's a difference is because, for quilters especially, but you know, honestly for all of us, you might fall in love with a certain part of the fabric. Maybe it's this piece of paisley or this flower and you wanna put it in repetition in your quilt. So if you have a large piece like this, you're gonna end up with, you know, 8 or 10 flowers. Versus a skinny piece where you'd probably have 2 or 3 and then a couple would be cut off. And that's just disappointing. So the fat quarter gives you a lot of options, and it also happens to be the exact right size for this project. So once you have your fat quarter, just make sure that you have ironed out the creases as much as possible, because fat quarters are folded on display. They do tend to have pretty heavy creases. And lie it out on your cutting mat. And I'm using here a 24-inch-by-6-inch ruler. Essentially, you don't have to use this kind of ruler, but you do want to be cutting six inches wide and then from corner to corner on the fabric. And that's something called cutting on the bias. Which, again, I'll explain in case you don't know what it is. It's something that mostly garment makers do. Cutting on the bias is cutting the fabric where it is the most stretchy. So you can tell that along the bias, from corner to corner, this fabric has a ton of stretch. Versus cutting on the grain, which is what most crafters do quilters do, quilters do, which has very, very little stretch. It still has a little bit, but not as much as cutting on the bias. So you generally don't cut on the bias when you're making something like a bag 'cause you don't want it to stretch. You don't want your bag to stretch out. But when you're doing something like making a garment that's going to be around the corner of your shoulder, around your elbow, you do want it to curve and stretch a little bit. And then this is how we get around not having elastic in this project, which is really fun and simple. So if you place your ruler along the bias here, we're just gonna cut out a six-inch-wide piece. I'm gonna turn it around so that I can trim these corners off. Essentially, you're gonna end up with a piece that is about 22 to 23 inches long and 6 inches wide, which happens to be the perfect size for my head. My head is about 22 and a half inches in circumference. So if you wanna measure your head from where you would normally put your headband. If you find that your head is bigger than mine, you're gonna need a little bit more fabric. But if your head is my size or smaller, or, you know, if you're making this for a little kid, of course you don't need as much fabric. So a fat quarter is still perfect. The next step is to create just a tube out of the fabric. And that's really simple. By putting it right sides together. And then just secure it with a couple of pins. If you feel really confident, you only need a few pins. And then we're gonna sew down the side that we just pinned. You do wanna backstitch here because going to be roughly finishing the edges of this. So you just wanna backstitch to make sure it doesn't come out, unravel, at the very beginning of your sewing. And here I'm using a three-eighths-of-an-inch seam allowance. It's really a matter of preference. Again, if you want a wider headband, you're gonna want a skinnier seam allowance, but you could really do a half-inch seam allowance if you want pretty wide space to be sewing in. And again, at the end, just do a quick little backstitch to secure it. So pull it off the machine and trim your threads there. Gonna turn this right sides out. Now, if you have a skinnier headband, if you decide not to make this six inches wide, you might need a little bit of help turning this inside out with either a turning instrument or using a pencil or a knitting needle to help you turn it inside out. This one is pretty large so I can fit my fingers in and just pull it right sides out pretty simply. This is so simple for a headband that you can really make it any width that you want. Once you have it right sides out, we're gonna go over to the iron and press this so that the seam is on the edge. So you want the seam to be hidden in some ways. But it's just a really quick press. To make nice crisp edges. Flipped it over so you make sure your edges are all really nice and clean and crisp. Take it back to your machine. And now we're gonna use a really small seam allowance to do a decorative top stitch along the edges of the headband. So here I'm actually just gonna do a quarter-inch seam. You could do an eighth of an inch. If you feel more comfortable, you could do it even skinnier than that. It's really just up to you and the look that you prefer. Again, here, I'm gonna back stitch to secure it because you don't want your decorative top stitch to fall out once you've sewn it all together. Since it is a top stitch, you want to try and make it as straight as possible because people will be seeing it. And when you do pick your thread, keep in mind that people will be seeing this top stitch. Here I picked a really bright orange, in part because there's a beautiful orange color in the fabric, but it's also just kind of fun to see the orange top stitch. I'm gonna backstitch one more time. And we're gonna go down the other side and do the exact same thing. I think on fabric like this where the pattern is multicolored, you can go with a thread that is any of the colors in the pattern or something neutral, like a white or gray. I use gray a lot in sewing for that reason, because it's a good neutral. Wouldn't go with a darker color, 'cause that's really gonna stand out. Pull this off. Again, just trim off the threads. Now this is where, if you're not totally sure how big your head is, you can sort of try this on at this point and put it over your head and, you know, sort of throw a safety pin in and see if you need to make it tighter or looser. Again, for my head size, which is 22 and a half inches, for this pattern. It actually so happens that you can just overlap it by about an inch. And I'm actually just gonna approximate it. I don't even measure it out. So about an inch, you wanna overlap your ends. And put in a couple pins to secure it. We're gonna take this back to the machine and switch over to a zigzag stitch. And I'm gonna both secure the fabric to either side, using a zigzag stitch. And then, at the same time, do an overcast stitch which will prevent fraying from happening in the future when you wear the headband. And you do wanna do a quick little backstitch at the very beginning. Just gonna pull it off. Trim the threads. And before I go to the other side, I'm gonna cut these long threads off so you don't accidentally sew them in. I missed one. Gonna put it inside out and then do the same thing on the other side. Zigzag overcast stitch. Overcasting just means that you're zigzagging slightly over the raw edge of the fabric to secure it so that it doesn't unravel. And adjust it just a little bit. Pull it off. You're so close to being ready. Again, just trim off the little threads there. They don't tickle the back of your neck. Then even without elastic, it's still stretchy. You can just put it over your head. And it fits right on. Really quick and simple headband for the summer. You can make it out of any fabric. It's so versatile and easy to do.