Matchy Headband

I am going to make full use of the blue and orange plaid button shirt I bought at a yard sale a few weeks back.  If you remember, I made the shirt skirt from it, so the top part of the shirt still has lots of fabric.  What has inspired me was a simple cloth headband I recently bought at Walgreens.  Inspried may not be the proper term...I'm going to shamelessly copy the Walgreens headband.  In the pic below, it is the white and green headband.

Saturday morning project

I made a template from a manila folder of the purchased headband.  I will place this template on a folded section of cloth and cut.  This is done twice to get a top-facing and bottom piece of cloth.  I also took off the rest of the buttons and the label from the shirt.  I love collecting buttons.  I have a jar of buttons on my dresser.

I heart button jars!

The jar was something I got at a thrift store years ago.  It is an old spice jar; I've never seen anything so quaint before.  Then one day I went to an estate sale and there was a whole 20-piece jar set with wall mounted wire shelf of the exact jar I had.  At first I was excited, then, because there was so many, I felt like it lost its charm somehow.  I decided not to buy any and just keep my lone one on my dresser.

Back to finishing the headband.  Once I got the two pieces cut out, I cut a length of elastic about 6" long and pinned it in between the two layers of fabric.

Sewing is so backwards, sometimes!

I stitched along the edge with a ball-point needle on my sewing machine.  I did not want to run the risk of the thread bunching when I got to the elastic.  I'm not sure if it would have, but I did not want to rip out rat nests this morning.  I sewed around the elastic end and 90% of one side.  This is where it got a bit tricky, I  then found the other end of the elastic between the fabric and pinned it to the other end.  The fabric bunched up and I had to keep it smooth so I could sew the end and the other side.

Almost there...

I left a small opening and then turned it right-side out. This left a hole where I did the transformation from scrunchie to headband.  The purchased headband had topstitching around the entire edge; so I chose to do that too.  I am not always a straight sewer, even when I try to line it up with the guidelines on the sewing machine.  The fabrics have a mind of their own and do what they want, even if you are feeding it through straight.  My sewing sistas, I'm sure, would back me up on that fact. 

See ya, hole!

I pressed the fabric so the seams were flat and aligned the fabric folds of the hole so I can close it when I topstitch.  To aid in my mission to sew straight, I used a zipper foot with the needle on the right side (my zipper foot has a plastic piece that you can move from side to side, depending on what side the zipper teeth are on).  This actually worked the way I imagined, so I was happy!  Since this did not take too much time, I cut out another headband out of left-over fabric from my Halloween costume last year, where I was a cowgirl.  The fabric was a faux suede, like microfiber/moleskin, which was supposed to represent my cowhide skirt and vest.



Two new headbands

I can't forget that I did have help cutting out the pattern... 


I wouldn't have been able to do it without you, Roo!



When I start a project, it is expected that either Julie or Jasmine will come and get themselves in the middle of it.  My eldest kitty, Julie (aka Roo) helped by laying all over the fabric and pushing it all over the table.  Like I said...typical!

Shirt Skirt

This project idea came while yard-saling.  Here in Florida, you can go to yard sales practically every weekend of the year.  It is something that I started doing on Saturdays to learn my way around the new neighborhood I had moved into; now I'm hooked.  You can get some really great deals.  So, I got this man's XL button shirt at a yard sale for 50 cents.  The blue and orange plaid print caught my eye and I was thinking that there is so much fabric involved in men's shirts, that I could cut it up and make something fall-looking with it.

Jasmine thinking, "How can I get inside this thing?"

So, my vision was a skirt.  Nothing too fancy, nothing Project Runway, just a simple elastic waist skirt.  I cut the body off the top part of the shirt right below the arms.  Why hem if you don't have to?  This way, I can keep the side seams and the bottom hem.  I also wanted to keep the buttons to maintain the "button-up look," so I sewed shut the button front (no peek-a-boo when I sit down).  I removed the spare buttons that are often stitched on the bottom of the inside facing and also detached the pocket with a seam-ripper; I will use both of these later.

Karate-Cut!

I sewed the pocket onto the front of the shirt/skirt.  Then I started on the casing for the elastic waist band.  For this, I folded and pressed the top raw edge about 1/4" around and then around again a little more than an inch.  My elastic was 3/4" wide.

Why waste a perfectly edge-folded and pressed pocket??

 You can click on each pic to enlarge.

Waist band casing in progress

 After the casing was pinned, I sewed around and left an opening of about 1.5" so that I can snake the elastic through.  Since I started with an XL, this was going to be a full skirt.


Use a large safety pin to guide it through the casing

Once I got the elastic to fit comfortably, I made sure that the elastic was not twisted in the casing.  I hate when the elastic is twisted!  Then, using a ball point sewing needle, (the regular point needles will only bunch the thread into a rat's nest under the elastic; you don't have to ask how I learned this), stitch the two ends of the elastic together with a zig-zag stitch.  I then sewed the snake-hole closed.  I adjusted the fullness evenly around the skirt and on each side, straight-stitched through the fabric and elastic to prevent the dreaded twist of the elastic.

Completed Shirt Skirt

If you notice on button shirts, there are a few inches at the bottom where there are no buttons.  The finishing touch was hand-sewing the buttons I removed earlier to the bottom part of the button front to complete the button-up look.  Viola!  A Shirt Skirt!

Real clothes or pjs??

Don't mind me squinting, sewing inside, then going out in the full sun, is blinding!  This skirt is definitely full, almost potato sack full.  But, probably not too full that someone will wonder whether it was Idaho or russet.  It is very comfy, almost like pjs.  Not matter what this will end up being, it's what I'm wearing today!

Tonight is dinner with the boyfriend's parents.  They come over on Sunday evenings to eat dinner and watch Dexter.  We are all so hooked on Dexter.  I don't beleive that Rita actually died in the last season's conclusion.  I was in denial, because it was filmed with this bright/blurry look to it that mimiced Dexter's daydreams, so I convinced myself that it was somehow him looking back on something.  Well, look who was wrong!!  I will wear my outfit and see if anyone comments as to why I'm already in my pajamas.  Good night!