Ruffle Headband Tutorial

I've been making a lot of headbands lately and I thought I'd share a really cheap and easy version with you!

First, you need a headband. I bought these awesome 5mm metal ones from a website called Trimweaver. They're cheap and work with a lot of styles, you can spraypaint them if you don't want them silver. Or just go find a headband you want to do this too--possibilities are endless.


This is what makes it cheap--find an old sweater or get one from a thrift store. This one had a ribbed knit cuff on the bottom which makes it easy to make it ruffled and cute for our headband.

I cut it up into all the different pieces I could use for something else.

I cut off the bottom of the sweater which gave me a long strip of ribbed fabric to work with. This is about 3 inches wide and I cut it into 3 strips for 3 headbands. There's really no rhyme or reason to measuring, you just play around until you get what you like.
Set your machine to a 5 width. Basically you're just sewing a running stich, or a basting stitch so you can gather the material. You can sew a running stitch by hand if you don't have a sewing machine.

center the stich in the middle of the fabric (unlike mine here that is off to the side.) Just sew one line down the middle.
Gather it and make it ruffled and tie a knot with the string ends, then hot glue it onto your headband. Try placing it on your head to decide where you want the ruffle to go on the headband.

Take another small strip of the same material (btw 1/4 & 1/2 in) to cover up the stitch in the middle. Hot glue it down.

To embellish it and finish it off, glue or sew on some of the buttons from the same sweater. I also stitched some securing loops underneath the headband to secure the ruffle to the metal headband.

The end! Now go find a sweater to cut up!