A Silk Flower Headband

This one's all for me!

April showers bring May flowers. That's the old nursery rhyme and this week's Iron Craft challenge. We were to do something to do with flowers. I made a flower headband using my husband's silk pajamas (with his permission, of course) and my daughter's headband. She wasn't using it anyway. Please don't tell on me.

Ingredients:

• Silk strips - one 1.5"x20" strip & two 3/4"x20" strips
• Headband (preferably fabric)
• Felt
• Hot glue gun & sticks
• Scissors and/or rotary cutter
• Cutting mat
• Straight edge
• Craft stick

As I said before, I started off with a set of pajamas, but you could just go and buy a bit of silk or even ribbon. This project didn't need much at all, so you can probably expect some more silk projects in the future.

I started by cutting off the cuff and then cut the leg off at 20".

Remove the cuff and cut the pajama leg at 20 inches.

I trimmed off one edge to make it completely straight and then cut the three strips needed for the headband.

Trim off the edge to get a straight line.

Time to fire up the hot glue gun. If you want, you could use a fast drying fabric glue instead. Just test it on a scrap piece of fabric to make sure it won't bleed through.

Silk + Hot glue gun = Stinky!

Begin to cover the headband by gluing one end of the 3/4" wide strips to the inside of the band.

Just a little dab'll do ya!

Then wrap the strip around the headband as evenly as possible. Don't worry about the frayed threads. Snip them off if they get a bit too long or are getting in the way. You can trim the whole thing up later. I like the raw edges, so only trimmed the very long ones.

Lots of wrapping.

You'll need both 3/4" strips to completely cover the headband.

The covered headband.

The headband's finished, so now it's time to start on the flower. Cut a circle of felt. I used brown because I didn't have blue and I thought the brown would blend in better with my hair, just in case anyone could see it while I was wearing it. Turns out you can't. 

Starting the flower.

Begin on the outside and work your way in. Use a craft stick to hold the 1.5" wide silk strip in place. It's just a great way to avoid burning your fingerprints off. I just used a smushing technique (yes, a very technical term) and filled in nearly the entire circle.

Smush it! Smush it real good!

To fill in the center, I took the rest of the strip and twisted it, piled a bunch of glue in the center and artfully (more smushing) arranged the twisted bit in place. Tuck the end in and secure with a bit more glue.

This flower's a bit twisted.

Cut a small strip of felt to make a loop on the back. This will hold the flower onto the headband. Just glue the ends down, leaving the middle open.

It's kind of like a belt loop...but for your head.

And that's it. Finished. Done. Complete. Fin. That's all she wrote. 

Mine! All mine!

I'm so in love with this headband.  I tend to make hair accessories just for Zara, but this one is all for me. And what?

More views of my loverly new headband.