Sewing Headbands

This week I have been making headbands for our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.  These are costing me $0 since I already have everything....the fabric used is scraps.  When I organized all my scraps months ago, I cut these out, placed them in a plastic container....and forgot about them.  Stuff got piled on top of my container and "out of sight, out of mind" happened ~ I uncovered it this week!  Many years ago I bought a handy, dandy tube turning tool, and never could figure out how to use it ~ this week I figured that out too.  Products really need to come with explicit directions for "dummies".

insert the plastic tube into the fabric tube

shove the end of the fabric into the plastic tube with the dowel

viola....it works.  *see further instuctions below

fabric tubes ready to be ironed and attached with elastic to headbands

finished headbands ~ ready for shoeboxes

*when inserting the dowel you need to have enough fabric "caught" to encase the dowel ~ kind of like a fold of fabric.  Otherwise the dowel shoves thru the tube with no fabric and accomplished nothing but frustration.  Once I figured out the trick, my fabric turning went a lot quicker.  In other words....play with it till ya find out what works for you! 

The link for the headbands is http://www.happytogetherbyjess.com/double-sided-fabric-headband-pattern/.  My suggested to slightly change her directions is....to sew one side of the headband and press,  then turn under both ends, press and sew.  Then sew the other side and turn, then press.  It seems like this would be a whole lot easier than trying to shove the ends up to encase them in the seam after the top was sewn on both sides.  I am going to try this next time...because I did it the "shove" way this time.  Even if you don't sew the ends, you can press the ends.

Happy Crafting!