Baby Project: Headbands

I came to the realization early on that this baby girl was going to be stuck in her brothers hand me downs a lot for the first few months. Part of me feels guilty for that but part of me is happy that all of his clothes are not going to waste. I know that we will encounter plenty of cases where people will call her a "he" and I know that wearing some boy clothes are not going to help (and I mean wearing neutral color onesies, not blatant boy clothes).

I wanted to try to make her look more girly and I started looking into headbands. I was going to buy some on etsy but then I started thinking that I could make most of them. I was only going to make 10 or so, just so I had one in every color but then I went a little crazy. Like 23 headbands and 8 hairbows being made in 4 days.

I started out wanting to make some celtic knot headbands with t-shirt yarn. Goodness knows that Ben is always wearing out his undershirts so I knew that I had that on hand. I took one t-shirt of his and it made 14 headbands. I dyed them using moms tie dye stuff.

I first made all of these knotted headbands using this tutorial at Love Stitched.  Once I did the knot, I would spread out all of the yarn ends and sew on a piece of elastic to connect the two sides together.

I really liked them but they were not as wide as I was hoping they would be. I went back and cut some yarn strips to be 2" wide and did those. This is definitely more what I was picturing.

Just for a size comparison. 

I did not need all of these to be knotted so some I braided. These were the first ones that I did so I was experimenting with how to sew up the ends (That is why you see one with a white band around the back). These do not have elastic on them as you can see. They still stretch some but they definitely will have a shorter life span than the ones with elastic since they will not be able to grow as much with her head.

Lastly I wanted to try another method. I made these pinched bow headbands using a tutorial from Sugar Bee Crafts. I love how simple they are!

These I just made a bowtie using the same method that I did for Miller's birthday party. I sewed the two ends of elastic together at a felt circle of the same color as the fabric. Then I hot glued the bow on.

Same concept as above except I made a bow with grosgrain ribbon.

I already had these flower made from a project a few years ago. I just did the elastic with felt circle sewing and glued on the flower.

 

The bows were so easy to make for the headbands that I decided to make a few more just for her to wear when she gets hair (if she is not born with it like her dad and brother). Yep, I already have a Halloween, 4th of July and St Patrick's Day bow in there. I am just being prepared because I know I will not have time for any of this stuff for a while after she is born. The orange one in the top left corner is to put on our UT hat for the hospital. It has a safety pin back.

The rest have a simple alligator clip. 

I am aware that I went a little overboard but I had fun. Confession time- as soon as I made these, I started researching colored elastics on-line. I ordered 27 yds of different elastic ribbon for future headbands. I am not making them all now but if I was going to pay for shipping, I wanted to get all of them for future use. I might be making a few before she comes but I will try to keep it under control.