This is an amazingly easy (and effective!) way to make a headband for taming long or wild hair. My partner is growing his hair long for the first time (nothing to do with my influence, honest! :p) and it’s getting to the point where he finds the bits in his face a bit annoying. I’ve made him a few crocheted headbands, but he finds that they stretch after a few uses and become slightly too loose to feel totally effective. This is an idea suggested by a friend of his and i have seen it on a few acquaintances who have dreadlocks – using the sleeve of an old tshirt as a headband.
It’s incredibly easy to do – just take one old tshirt (this was a freebie from Fresher’s Fair years ago)
Cut off one sleeve, cutting on the sleeve side of the seam-
Now is a good time to try on your new headband. The narrower part with the underarm seam will go at the back, and the hem of the sleeve will be the front edge of the headband. If your tshirt is quite small like mine was, you might need to cut off this hem to allow it to stretch over your head. If you can wear it without cutting the hem off though, this will help to stop it over-stretching and becoming too big to be effective.
My sleeve wouldn’t go over my head with the hem on so it had to go!
You now have the basis for one headband!
Unfortunately the back does have a tendency to flick up! There are two ways to deal with this – you can just chop off the offending bit (best if you want to keep your headband quite plain, this is what i have done for my boyfriends one!)
Which gives you a nice, neat, flat band.
Or (my preferred option obviously) you can do a bit of gathering, a bit of decorating…(here’s one i made earlier)
I just gathered about an inch at the back of the headband (hand-stitched a running stitch then pulled the thread tight to gather and secured it) then sewed on a little circle of denim and a circle of brightly coloured fabric left over from another project to cover the gathering stitch, and added a little pearly button for extra cuteness! The gathering just pulls in the back enough for it not to stick up and look daft :)
So there you have it! One manly black headband for my boyfriend, one cute pink one for me! I have to say it came in very handy last week when i baking for two solid days (i had a cake stall at the wonderful Hushed Puppies mini-festival at the Dog and Partridge in Bolton) and having my hair getting in my face or anywhere near cakes was not a good option!
The Enchanted Forest 