Tutorial: hairband

Here is the tutorial for this hairband. It’s adapted from the Pochee vol.8 one, I reduced the width. Since I didn’t make it really by myself I wasn’t sure I’d post the tutorial. But I decided to do it anyway for the following reasons:1. It’s far from being the main project of the book. I doubt anyone would buy it because of this pattern only (that said, I really recommend it ’cause it’s full of great pieces!)2. the cooking blogs often share recipes taken from books, sometimes with their own variations, sometimes as is. Crafting is a little like cooking, so why wouldn’t we do the same?My point is not of course to make the book useless, as you would have guessed. But this is a simple project that I thought could be useful and I wanted to share my version of it. I’m only showing my own images here, not images from the book.

You will need enough fabric to cut the pieces shown above. You’ll also need elastic band for the back to the hairband. I used two pieces of 3,5mm x 10cm. You’ll also need what you want to use for embellishment.

Assembly:- take the main piece, fold it wrong side out, sew the open side (about 1cm from the edge).nullTurn right side out and iron on.- for the end pieces: turn the sides toward the center, right side out. You should obtain a piece that is 3cm by 5cm. Iron on to mark folds.- Here you fold the ends of the main piece so that it’s the final size (1,25cm):

- Then it’s the part that I found the most difficult: sew everything together.The elastic band had a tendency to go away so I started by sewing the end pieces to the main piece and then sewed the elastic bands to the end pieces. The end pieces are folded like that:

About embellishments:I’m not detailing the way to add embellishments here, but you can of course add anything on the band. Most of the embellishments (adding lace, fabric, embroidery…) are best to be put before sewing anything, otherwise you might see the stitches on the back of the hairband. In my case, the bigger yo-yo is wider than the band, so I couldn’t add it before sewing the band. I hand sewn the yo-yo in the case, carefully, so that no stitch would be seen on the back.

Note: you can also cut the main part as two 6x43cm pieces. Then you put them right side on right side and sew each long side. Then you turn them right side out and keep on as above. It might be easier to add embellishments to one side.

Let me know what you think about it or if you have questions.

Accessory

As you can see, I don’t have much free time lately… The new life I started in France is very time consuming. So when I finally got a few hours to spend sewing, I decided to do something quick and simple: something with instant gratification. I decided to make something pretty for my hair: a headband adapted from the Pochee magazine (vol.8).

(not easy to photograph a black headband on dark hair…)

I reduced the size because I now have shorter hair and wasn’t sure a very large one would fit me. I had lots of embellishment ideas, but in the end I went for something that would be easy to coordinate. I added two black yo-yos made in the same fabric as the main part.

And now that I know it fits me I can make other versions, changing fabric and adding other embellishements! Which is great, because with shorter hair I don’t have that many hairdo options (I miss my long hair sometimes).

Spotted: Pochée autumn 2009

The new Pochee is out! I’ve been haunting my bookstore for some time, waiting for it to appear. I really like that magazine. I don’t own any yet, but it’s only because I can’t choose which one to buy. I love reading it at the bookstore. They always have nice sewing ideas, cute clothes, explanations that seem very well detailed and the overall look is really nice. Very natural japanese. I also love the part where they show the workplace of some designers who (I think) work from home.

Here is the cover of the last issue which is still as nice looking as the previous ones.

Like the new “Pochée special” sewing book they just release (going to talk about that in a future post) the magazine concentrates on outer clothes. Which means dresses, something that they call “dress coat”, which can really be a coat if made in the appropriate fabric, and jackets. I think among those main patterns I saw 5 that looked definitely like coats/jackets to me. As usual those are offered by several “natural” designers and for each style you will find one basic pattern and one or two variations (which usually make a really different garment). Appart from those patterns you can find: small objects, bags (2 pages), leggings/arm warmer (1 pair)/leg warmer (1 pair) (2 pages), stoles/vests (2 pages), dresses and tunics for women and girls, skirts for women and skirts, two jackets/coats for children and a few bags for your children who go back to school. That’s all I can remember right now.

Edit from September 10th: thanks to lolo from Le grenier de Noélie we now have a link to scans of this magazine. There aren’t all the outfits, but it show those from the main theme. You can see them here (flash needed I think). They also show the leggings pages, the stole pages, two of the children pages (those with the coats) and two other adult outfits that I liked.

It’s funny, it seems that I see jackets and coats patterns everywhere lately. Is it me or are they really more present? I’m not sure. It might also be that more of them have interesting details/shapes. There was a lot of new releases since the beginning of September, I’ll try to talk about them in the next posts (at little at a time).