Spur of the Moment Headband Holder

My sweet four-year-old was excited for us to work together to clean her room after dinner. Which of course meant that I did most of the cleaning, but, you know, she did put a couple of books away. She has a little box I've been putting her hair accessories in but she kind of forgot about it, which explains why she couldn't find her Batman headband or why she hasn't worn her super cute peach-colored headband with massive frills.

I've been telling myself I ought to make my girls an organizer for their hair accessories for probably a couple of years, but finally I decided it was time. I jumped right into it. Without referring to pinterest, without drawing it out and planning. Just wingin' it. Sometimes you just need to get in there and do it.

I spent an hour, maybe an hour and a half on this. Lyda picked out the fabric, which was nearly a perfect rectangle already, and the two long edges were already cut using the pinking shears. I looked through my stash of ribbons and lace and my plan formed. So, basically, here's how this worked out.

Supplies

• Rectangle of fabric--mine was...12"x24"???

• Lace or ribbon--I determined I had enough room to do three columns so I needed roughly 3 times the length of my fabric

• A small rectangle of fabric--in my case I had wide lace, I cut two of them slightly wider than the width of my main fabric and stitched them together. This was for a pocket at the bottom

• Thread

• Pinking Shears

• Sewing apparatus--I actually did some hand sewing with a needle, as well as using my machine

Procedure

1. Cut main fabric to desired size using pinking shears. This was just so I wouldn't have to hem the edges, the pinking shears should help it not to fray.

2. Determine how many columns of ribbon/lace you would like and where to place them and pin them into place. I felt I could make three columns. I folded the rectangle to find the center and pinned the first length of lace. Then I decided to try and cover the edges a bit by placing the other two lengths of lace right on top of the edge. I wondered if this might be in issue and maybe it would be better to have some extra main fabric for support. I don't think that it's too terrible how I did it, but leaving a couple of inches of main fabric on the outsides probably would have been a better choice. So for the width of my main fabric, maybe I should have done just two columns.

3. Mark the distance between tacking points. I used 4 inches from the top of the pocket, then 3 inches, and then every 2 inches for the rest of the way. The bottom is where I thought some clips would be, so I felt that having a longer length unstitched would be better, and the 2 inch areas are mainly for the head bands. I cannot yet say if this is the optimal measurements.

4. Sew the ribbon/lace into place at your tacking points. I machine stitched, going over the ribbon back and forth multiple times, then lifted the foot, moved the fabric over to the same spot on the next lace, stitched back and forth, moved again, stitched back and forth. Clipped the thread and moved down to the next marking. Clear as mud?

5. Pin the pocket into place (honestly, I did the pocket first and then the columns of ribbons, I recommend doing it in the order I have written here). The pocket should be wider than the width of the main fabric, this was to be able to fold over to the back and have a clean edge to the pocket. Since I used lace, the bottom didn't need to also fold over to the back, because it's already a nice, finished edge.

6. Sew pocket along the two sides and bottom. I actually hand stitched this, but if I'd done the pocket last, I would have already had my sewing machine out and so I would have machine sewn it.

And that's it! I trimmed the thread ends, and used a hanger with clips to hang it up--we'll see if that holds.

Overall the takeaway of this for me wasn't how to make a headband holder, it was to jump in and do it. Not put it off and wait to plan it and pick the perfect design and anticipate and fix all the kinks. This wasn't a super important project, so it's okay that it's not perfect and has an issue here and there. Especially because we may find it useless if my girls never put the headbands away on it. But for now, they can see all the headbands and the headbands have an intended home. So throw caution to the wind and just do it!