January » 2010 » Untangling Knots

How to Make a Big Bow Headband

Don’t ask me why I keep sticking bows on everything. When I was home at my parents I made a billion headbands with the hot glue gun. One of them had a big shiny bow on it and people seem quite keen on it. Here is a quick tutorial of what I did.

Supplies:
About 1.5 Yards of 2.5 inch ribbon
A hot glue gun with hot glue
Scissors
A wide headband. I used an inexpensive textured Scunci headband from CVS

Not shown but also needed:
A Ruler
Thread
Pins
A sewing needle or sewing machine

Instructions:
Cut a piece of ribbon that is slightly longer than your head band.

Glue your ribbon to the outside of your headband.

Trim excess ribbon and glue the edges to the inside of the headband. Be sure to fold the bottom ends up carefully. Smooth out excess glue with the side of your scissors as you work. If you’re using a low temp gun and have badass knitting callouses, you can probably just use your finger to smooth it out. You’re trying to get rid of lumps and bumps that would be uncomfortable.

It should look a bit like this.

Cut one 18 inch piece.

Cut one 15 inch piece.

Cut one 4.5 inch piece.

Sew all pieces into tubes. This may be difficult with the smallest piece. You can get away with sewing a knot on each end and in the middle on the smallest.

Center the 15 inch piece on top of the 18 inch piece.

Pin in place. Sew two parallel loose rows down the center.

Pull on the ends of the threads to gather the bow together. Sew directly in between the parallel rows to fix the gathering. Slide the smallest loop on and adjust it so that it covers the seams and looks right to you. I put a little pleat in mine. Hot glue the smallest loop in place in the back.

Hot glue your bow to your headband. I tried to center mine but wasn’t entirely successful.

Ta da! You’re all done. It looks cute on the outside and gross on the inside. That’s how you know it’s homemade.

If you decide to use this tutorial, please send me a picture of your finished headband. I’d love to see it. Feel free to ask any questions if something isn’t clear.

First Garment

This was the first garment that I ever made with yarn. It kind of shows how clueless I was at the time. It’s short sleeved, heavy, lacey and wool. There is no appropriate weather for this thing.

I made it when I was 17. I used Cascade 220 Quatro and the pattern is Short and Sweet from Stitch and Bitch: the Happy Hooker. Short digression: Before I bought this book, a guy I knew at the time called me and said, “I’m at Borders. There is a book here called the Happy Hooker and it reminded me of you.” I was thinking “What the hell?” until he explained that it was a book about crochet.

It was so big that I could add buttons to the front with no problem. It also draped weird in the back. You can’t tell in the bottom picture because of how I’m holding the camera. When I relaxed my shoulders the back hung straight down instead of fitting the shape of my body. That would have been fine if I used a yarn with more drape but unfortunately I didn’t know that at the time.

The current game plan is to rip out two rows lace repeats, rework the lace so that it looks the same in the front, and add knit ribbing in the back so that the back fits. That’s my solution for the fit issues. I’m not entirely sure what to do about the warm-and-cold-at-the-same-time thing.

My hair was so long when I was 17 that I had to tie it up out of the way to photograph the garment. Insert wistful sigh here.

Sorry about the short disappearance. Things were a bit crazy when I got back to school and then I got a bit sick. I’m currently working on a long term knitting project (that isn’t looking quite so long term. I started a week and a half ago and I’m halfway through the body) so expect more flashback, fashion and fat dog posts.

Fascinating! Pt. 2

You might have noticed that I had to make a new category for this post. I wasn’t going to make a hot glue category so I made a general crafty one. I’m not sure if this helps anyone, but I try to label my blog posts so knitters can ignore the fashion stuff if they want to or dog haters can ignore the fat dog posts and so on. It’s pretty exciting to make a new category because it means that I’m doing new things. Yay me! Here are more of the fascinator inspired headbands that I made.

Ooooh! Sequins!

Can you tell that I’ve run out of things to say?

Fascinating! Pt. 1

I have a serious craft store problem. I go in to get a few buttons to finish a sweater or whatever and I end up taking home odds and ends for a billion other projects. Anyways, I was at the craft store getting buttons for my Veronica cardigan and I started thinking about the fascinator inspired headbands that I had been checking out at Nordstrom. Months before that, my friend Sarah was looking at one at Athropologie and said, “I bet you could make one of those.” That all popped into my head and I ended up taking home bags of feathers, felt, shiny things and the buttons that I came for. I stopped at CVS across the street and picked up some cheap narrow textured headbands. I had a hot glue session and voila!

This one is my favorite.

Note the fat dog lurking under the table.

I’m splitting this into two posts. I made waaayyyy to many headbands. I want to keep them all but I really don’t need that many headbands that are this similar. Expect part two tomorrow!

Who’da thunk?

Inspiration is a funny thing. Who would of thought that this

Photo Courtesy of Sally Jane Vintage

would inspire this?

I wanted to imitate the drama of a fur trimmed cardigan by using cables and garter stitch. I took some elements and ignored some others that wouldn’t translate well to a heavier knit. For example, I made my cardigan fitted through the body because worsted weight yarn wouldn’t drape attractively around my waist but I made the sleeves extra full around the cuffs because I knew it would work well there.

Anyways, I just thought I’d share with you guys part of how my design process works. This is why I love to read fashion blogs. They give me great ideas.

Veronica

The last thing I knit in 2009 was knit with the same yarn as the first thing I knit in 2009. I ran out of yarn for a cuff on this sweater but I had knit my sister a hat in the same colorway last January and used the left overs to finish this sweater.

I wanted something textured and with a big collar. This is what I ended up with. I knit this out of 4.5 skeins of Cascade 220 on 5mm needles. It hits at just the right spot to go with dresses. I’m pretty happy with it and the little gold and silver buttons I picked out.

I wrote pretty detailed notes so I might make the pattern available eventually. I’m going to have to knit a second one to fix some stuff that could be better. (Feel free to skip to the next paragraph here.) I had to sew the collar down to get it to lay well and the armpits are deeper than necessary. What is the point of a seamless sweater if you have to sew the collar down? I probably should add more short rows to the collar, a purl stitch down the inside of the collar so that it folds better, and move the decreases and increases farther from the fold line.

I named the cardigan Veronica because I had to knit the yoke twice and each time I knit it, I watched a season of Veronica Mars.

Thrift Store Finds

I do very little shopping when I’m at school so I always try to cram it all in when I’m at home. The other day I hit the thrift stores with my friend Vicki. She’s extremely fun to go thrift store shopping with because she always tries on the weirdest stuff. Here’s what I found this time.

Cardigan: Talbots – Shoes: Naturalizer – Bow Belt: Talbots – Skirt: Thrifted

I found this excellent wool-blend hounds tooth pencil skirt. I’m not entirely sure what I have to wear with this other than my orange cardigan because everything else is grey or a print but I love it. Super cozy.

I also found this excellent clock pendant necklace. It’s in working condition and has a cute little bow on top. It needs to be cleaned up but I’m quite pleased with it.

Bed Jacket

This is my first FO of 2010! It was cast on and cast off in about a week. Not a bad start for the year. Sorry about the cream on cream in this photos. It was raining out and there are slim pickings inside my parents’ house for indoors shots.

My Grandma gave me some extremely soft handspun yarn for Christmas. A friend of my aunt’s spun it from her own animals’ fur. It’s an alpaca/shetland blend. It was awesome and soft but it was also thick and thin yarn. That was a bit problematic for me because all my design ideas at the time needed even stitches.

I decided to knit something that showed off the uneven look of the yarn and would best take advantage of soft warm yarn. I made a bed jacket. It will be perfect for when I got back to Washington because it’s super cozy. The deep sleeves are great because they’re like a blanket for my arms. Haha!

I thought the cherry red buttons were a nice touch with the cream. For those of you interested, I knit the sleeves/body on 8mm needles and the ribbing on 6.5mm needles. I was considering putting the pattern up for the jacket on my blog but it seems too obvious of a design to bother. I’m also not sure how I feel about the way it drapes around my breasts. The draping is fine with me for my bed jacket, but I’m not sure if I want to inflict that on other people.

I imagined it would be fun to do a shoot with my bed jacket and my jim-jams but then I reminded myself that my typical PJs consist of a Firefly t-shirt and snowflake pajama pants. I thought I’d spare you that.

In the Back Yard

My sister requested that I do a post of fat dog pictures. Here are some pictures of Bean, in all her glory, romping around the back yard.

Expect some real posts soon. I have to sew buttons on a few things and photograph stuff. I’ve just been a bit busy.

Lazy Circle Skirt

I was so lazy with this skirt. I made it over Thanksgiving because I had been dying for a full short skirt. The fabric is pretty interesting because it reflects different lighting differently so sometimes it looks super bright and sometimes it’s almost black. It’s a stretchy knit so I just threw on an elastic waist band and left it unhemmed. It doesn’t fray or roll.

The color and length makes it a bit hard to wear. It doesn’t really go with very much of my wardrobe. It was good for Christmas parties and stuff, though.