I love this sweet romantic stitched wool felt headband! This step-by-step tutorial will take you through the process.
A while back I saw a Pin of the red felt bookmark shown below, made by the talented Bev from one of my favorite blogs, Flamingo Toes. She was inspired by a dead-end Pin that she had found and decided to create something similar. Her awesome readers loved her book mark and even helped her to find the original source of her dead end Pin. It is an Etsy shop called love, maude, and it is full of accessories with some of the most gorgeous stitching that I have ever seen. I am wondering if I need one of her felt headbands for myself…..
Here is the Pin from love, maude that originally inspired Bev:
And here is Bev’s bright, cheerful version:
I thought that Bev’s bookmark was darling, but that I would prefer it as a felt headband for baby rather than a bookmark. So my friend and I decided to embark on an attempt to make similar headbands for our little girls. She had more success than I. In fact, I started over twice and then gave up. This is the first thing I have tried to stitch, and yet I assumed it would be a piece of cake. I was a bit cocky. But don’t worry, the stitching universe humbled me sufficiently before I tried again a couple of day later and succeeded with anything that was even remotely acceptable.
Here is what I ended up with. This felt headband was pretty cute on my little lady, in my unbiased opinion. Plus it is unlike anything else that she has—no glitter, rhinestones, or feathers!—so it has gotten a lot of use.
After she wore her new felt headband a few times I had the idea to make a Valentine’s Day version. I have a holiday accessory obsession, what can I say? I had spotted these cute little heart clips from The Purl Bee on Pinterest last year, but, as you can see, my little lady doesn’t have any hair yet, and they are a bit too small and classy for me anyway. So I decided to use these hearts as inspiration and combine them with the stitching techniques from Bev’s bookmark.
If you have done stitching before I’m sure you can come up with something much more elaborate and romantic than my little felt headband, but if you haven’t you can do this too. I am living proof of that! Just be patient and maybe practice on a piece of scrap felt first.
Here goes nothing! I’m leaving the pictures nice and big so that you will be able to really see all of the stitching steps.
1. Cut out your hearts. I used stencils from my scrapbooking days. As you can see below, I cut two hearts. The smaller, inner heart is smooth and the outer heart was cut with pinking shears.
2. Now prep your embroidery floss. You will need a needle with a pretty big eye. Tie a small knot in one end of your thread and thread it through your top/inner heart in a spot where you would like one of your inner hearts to start.
3. Pull the thread all the way through (with the knot stopping it from coming loose, of course). Now stick your needle back through in the same spot where you began.
4. Here is where I made my mistakes. I was trying to get my loops to *just* the right size and then trying to secure them with a loop. Don’t do that. Leave them long and loose and stitch up through the center of the loop, as shown below. NOTE: The spot where you stick your needle up through your loop is the spot where your heart will stop, so make sure you choose the spot carefully.
5. Gently pull until the loop is short enough to be tight against the felt, and then stick your needle back into the heart just above the thread, as seen below, creating a tiny loop that will trap the embroidery floss and hold it in place.
6. Gently pull the thread through until you have a nice clean loop, as seen below.
7. Now stick your needle back through the felt at the same spot as the point of your original loop. (This is the point of your heart.)
8. Repeat steps 3 – 7. Now you have a cute little heart! If you want a flower instead of a heart then just keep creating loops in a circle. Add as many hearts and/or flowers as you would like.
9. Now pin your smaller heart on top of your larger heart. Use embroidery floss to create a decorative stitch around the edges, which will attach the two hearts together.
10. Voila! You did it! At this point you can attach your heart to a headband, alligator clip, pin, or anything else!
11. (Wowzer. Can you tell I took these pictures at different times of day?!) If you are making a baby headband then you need to cut some fold-over elastic to the desired length (I usually cut it two inches smaller than my baby’s head) and sew it together. You can do this with a machine or with a few hand stitches with your embroidery floss. Now cut a small square of felt.
12. Put some hot glue on your fold-over elastic and glue your heart to the elastic.
13. Now seal the heart firmly onto the elastic by covering your small square of felt with hot glue and glue it over the top of the elastic where it is already glued to the heart.
14. Ta-da! You have now successfully completed this tutorial. Now go put this headband on someone adorable and enjoy! Happy Valentine’s Day!
Sweet. So, so sweet.
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Awwww! I love that heart version! What a cute idea! And it looks so darling on your little one!
Thanks Bev!
So cute! I love the craft…..and your cute little model 🙂
Thanks for sharing. I want to try this for my little one.
These are adorable
I absolutely love this! I’m having a little girl in July and I’ve already started practicing and making bows for her! 🙂 Can’t wait to try these! 🙂