Ciao Beautiful Sewing Friends!
These are some notes from my re-making of a favourite headband-kind-of-accessory; the finished item is above, and the original is below this text. This is the first time I made such a thing, and the result is a bit clunky, but fun and certainly warm... I will remake a version of it with thinner strips of wool, and will make a T-shirt material version too, for lighter weather.
I almost always wear some kind of a band around my head, mostly to keep any hairs from tickling my forehead, or to keep my head warm in winter, but also for the aesthetics of it and the sentience of having my head 'wrapped'. I like this feeling.
So I looked at this favourite head wrap woolly thing, and thought about how to translate it into the kinds of materials I have in my sewing room store. I wanted a more colourful one, to use when I have darker clothing on, to bring the energy of an outfit up a little. In the culture I live in, a medieval market-hill-town in south Italy, folks mostly dress in black, grey, dark blues, browns... I enjoy my role as Bringer Of Colour into the community.
These are the three jumper-left-overs that I found near the top of my piles of garments and scraps for sewing with; I cut the bottoms of each garment, then cut a bit thick strip along the belly of each piece. I like the colour combinations in terms of being related to the primary colours, but a bit out of the range. I can imagine lots of 3-way combinations that I can use from my store - pinks and reds, greys and whites, patterned woollens....
Cutting into wool is always a tad nerve-wracking! I tried not to stretch the edges too much as I cut, especially for those garments that have not been felted (accidentally) in the wash. Those which are felted are lovely to work with, keeping their tension and shape even when handled quite roughly.
I sewed each of the 3 strips that I'd cut into tubes, then turned them inside-out. I used the sewing machine with a basic stitch, rather than the serger, the latter which would have made the edges rumple.
It was very satisfying to make these tubes, and then to pleat them for the first time!
I wanted to keep them quite flat, so they'll sit around the head nicely, but next time that will probably involve sewing along the edges of them too, to keep the shape.
It was a wee bit fiddley to get the right combination of pleats, so that all the colours linked up with the ends of their own tails!
Rather good fun to get it pinned in place, and to have the basic garment almost complete!
And this part of completing the circles was very satisfying too: a particulkar technique of sewing the back of the tube ends together first, then doing a kind of invisible stitch to pull the front ends together neatly.
The finished tube needed to be stretched and pulled into shape - again, this might have been easier to do with a) narrower strips/ tubes, and b) with less heavy knit/ felted wool. It is good to learn by doing, though!
The first trying on is a bit tight! So I will stretch it a bit more before using it.
