Easy Scrap Fabric Headband

On my recent out of town trip, I came across these selling at the tennis tournament for $15-$20 each.

They are called Sweaty Bands and you can purchase them here. Beautiful ribbons and a multitude of designs they called to me. So being the one who thinks she can make everything, I slinked over to the booth to take a look and see exactly what they were made of. I was surprised to see that they they would be pretty easy to duplicate and that is what I did yesterday morning before I left for work.

Here is what I started with:

I didn't have any nice ribbon so I used a cute Fat quarter fabric, a length of velvet ribbon and a spool of elastic. Now I searched and searched my craft stash for wider elastic but could not find any except a coil of small elastic cord. I would have had to run to buy some, but it was 7 am and not many stores are open, so I used what I had. Next time I will make it with ribbon and the correct elastic (I will post photos of those later).

Now on to the Tutorial. First I cut a piece of fabric 16" long x 1 1/2" wide and 1"wide piece of velvet ribbon the same length. The velvet ribbon is used so that the headband does not slip when wearing.

Next I pressed a 1/4" in on each side of the fabric and the ends. I think the next time I might cut the fabric a little wider so the pressing is easier. (possibly 2" wide and press 1/2").

Next is to pin the sides together and add the elastic. I cut a piece about 20" long and folded in half since I wanted to make sure it would hold on my head.

Then I started to sew. I started at one end and then sewed all the way around, backstitching on the elastic a few times to secure. When I got to the other end I left it open. Looped the elastic around so it measured about 5" and poked it into the pocket of the stitched headband.Backstitched and sewed it closed,making sure that the fabric was folded in and under. Here is the result:

Both sides topstitched and finished. The hardest part of this was the pressing and cutting and if you use ribbon than you don't have to do either! The finished product:

And the Finished product being modeled (excuse my bed head short hair)!

So easy and this cost me about $1.00 since the only thing I bought was this fat quarter for .99 and everything else I had. This is a great idea for scraps of fabric and ribbon and takes less than 1/2 hour to make! I am sure to make more and post photos of them all! Enjoy!