Extra-Wide Headbands

Today I’m going to show you how to make them, using one of my favorite things to refashion – old knit t shirts! “Knit” just means stretchy fabric. This one I picked up at the thrift store specifically to refashion a while ago because it was a larger size (which means lots of fabric to work with) and I loved the little white polka dots:

Okay, here we go (this is a great project for a beginner if you’ve never sewn with knit before – give it a try!) – –

First cut a rectangle out of knit.  You can adjust it to however you’d like – mine is 7 inches wide (which makes for a headband a little over 3 inches wide) and 19 inches long.

Here it is, cut and ready:

Then fold the rectangle in half length-wise with the right sides together and sew down that long seam (in the picture below the fold is on the bottom and the seam is on the top).  When sewing, I used a serger, but you can also use just a zig zag stitch from your regular sewing machine.  A zig zag will allow the headband to stretch.

After sewing, turn the tube of fabric right-side out.  Twist it around until the seam is in the middle of the back – you can kind of see that here:

Now, with right sides together (the seam side is the wrong side), fold the fabric so that the short sides meet up and then sew along the short side, again using a zig zag stitch:

Now, you could be done right now.  Or you can add a little interest to the back and cover the seam – here’s how to do that…

Grab a scrap piece of fabric cut in a rectangle and fold the two shorter end in about a half inch:

Pinch the back of the headband along that short seam:

Wrap the rectangle around the pinched area:

At this point you can hand-sew it into place, or be lazy like me and use a little hot glue (yep, hot glue will hold fabric!  love that trick!)  Here’s what the back looks like with that:

And here’s the finished Extra-Wide Knit Headband – so cozy and awesome!

So easy – enough so that I made a dozen for my daughter’s basketball team – which you can kind of see this in this awesomely blurry picture:

If you want to try other knit headbands from t shirts, I have tutorials on my blog for a Twisted Headband and Knotted Headband: