Nesting: Scrappy Baby Hair Accessories

The doctor said no change. I wasn’t too surprised.

I’m glad too because I have a few things on my before baby bucket list I still need to cross off.

But onto today. Today is my last project post for the series!

I took one day aside this week and had a little hair accessory making marathon for our girl. I have a feeling it won’t be my last.

It was so fun to just pull out scraps to see what I could come up with. I keep a big scrap tote for felt, leather and fabric {even tiny pieces} and then another whole bin for larger knit scraps. You never know when you’ll need them!

I really  try not to hoard either. I just find that I really do use little scraps pretty much all the time and keeping them in nice neat bins helps. I have had SO many free projects, including from this series, come from…nothing…just those scraps. All of the stuff you’ll see today is completely scraps, plus the clips.

First, to make some knit headbands…

Because, although I’m calling them hair accessories, babies of course don’t really have a lot of hair to hold them in at first. So there needs to be something to wear them on.

These headband have raw edges and are a little less polished looking, but I kind of like that look.

I make my headbands with the curled raw edges showing. You could always flip it the other way if you don’t like that.

You just take a strip of knit about 3 inches wide and the length you need. 

For a newborn head you’ll want it 12.5 inches long, with a finished circumference of about 12 inches after sewing. I also made three more about 13.5 inches long (13 inches finished circumference) for 0-6 months.

Three inches may seem a bit wide but the sides should curl in.

You also need a thinner piece of knit about 1.5 inches wide by… I don’t know 3 inches long. You’ll be sewing and cutting off a lot of it in a minute anyway. Just a scrap will do.

Take your smaller piece of knit, and wrap it around your longer piece of knit. 

Sew and cut or serge up the side. 

Turn it right side out while keeping it on the long strip of knit.

Then sew your long piece of knit together into a loop.

Make sure it’s not twisted.

Slide the smaller piece of knit over the seam. 

Tack in place with some hand sewn knots if you like.  Easy, done and free.

I also have some soft fold elastic headbands on order from this shop. I feel like she had the best prices and color selection, which was important to me. I liked that I could order different sizes and colors in one listing, which not all shops let you do. I just received notice that they’ve just been shipped too! Yay!

Now for the bows and flowers.

Well…I should say just flowers. I really am someone who likes bows a lot, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by this picture. 🙂

I know there are a TON of tutorials on how to make felt flowers and so on.

Here is my take on what I made. Some are kind of old hat, but others I haven’t really seen myself. So maybe they will inspire you?

First…just a quick word about clips. I use an alligator clip for all my clips in this post except for the heart which uses a snap clip.

I have a 100 count box of clips that I got for $4 from Sally’s Beauty Supply. They come in single and double prongs and even have smaller packages. It really is a good buy to just get the big box though.

Okay now for the flowers…

This first one is a basically a stacked flower with some fluff.

Cut some flower shapes. They don’t have to be perfect. I cut mine out on the fold like a butterfly…sort of.

Make sure you have at least six layers.

Place them onto your sewing machine.

Put the feed dogs DOWN, and adjust your settings to a wide zig zag stitch.

Sew back and forth to get a nice knot. Rotate your flower and repeat one more time. 

You could of course do this by hand, but the machine is SO much easier.

Now fluff it up. Pretty pretty.

This is how I add leaves and the clip. 

Slide your clip onto a rectangle of fleece/felt and then put hot glue on the top before inverting it top down onto the back of your flower.

I still need to clip some threads on those leaves as you can see :), but you get the idea.

Speaking of leaves. 

For the red flower leaves, I stacked two different colors of green felt/fleece on top of each other. 

I then sewed in some veins before going back in and snipping around those veins.

I made sure my stitch length was a 4. It makes the stitching more obvious and pretty…in my opinion.

Next up, is this flower cluster clip…

Take some felt, fleece or knit.

 Roll it up. 

Glue it to another piece of felt/fleece at one end.

Snip off the top.

Repeat several times, cutting away some of the material as you go, to get smaller and smaller flowers.

Once you get a cluster of flowers you like, cut the excess felt/fleece away around the cluster.

Then finish up with adding leaves and a clip.

This is a pretty big clip that are really for older babies I think. The smaller one made out of jersey knit is even a bit big.

As for these rolled fabric flowers.

I of course had to throw in some these in for good measure.

And some circle flowers…

tacked together with embroidery floss…

I also made a cute little doubled up embroidered felt heart. 

I know I originally saw Dana from MADE make heart barrettes like these a couple of years ago but I can’t find the link to your post Dana. Sorry! Like I mentioned earlier. I used a snap barrette on the back of this one so it would lie flat.

And that’s that…for now. I forsee many more handmade hair accessories in this girls’ future. 🙂

I’ll be taking a much needed break over the weekend, but I’ll be back Monday morning to wrap up the series.

It has been SUCH a pleasure nesting with you.

Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend.