Monday, June 19, 2017

4th of July Tulle Headbands


For the first time ever, I have my own patriotic outfit for the 4th of July.  I purchased a watermelon LuLaRoe dress this Spring which is a very happy blue and red ensemble. The print of the dress is pretty busy, so my usual light up star necklaces might not make a big fashion statement.  Why not make myself a fascinator?

I wanted to create a pinwheel-esque shape, but I found some pointy flower tutorials and thought I would give it a try.  With 5 petals these just might look like a star!


I purchased 1/4 yard of tulle in Red, White and Blue.  (Technically I had 1/2 yard of the blue and red since I purchased these colors for my Pride fascinators, too.)  I purchased some fun plastic headbands from the dollar store.  Four headbands for a dollar, can't beat that price!  I debated between using the navy polka dot headband or the lighter blue, and decided to wait until I was ready to assemble the headband to decide.


For this project, I also used a needle and thread to assemble the flowers, some rhinestones to add some bling and a hot glue gun to add the tulle flowers to the headband in the end.


I decided to start out by cutting 5" squares of tulle.  I thought that I would cut 5 squares for each flower, but then I decided to double up the tulle for each petal.  Therefore I cut 10 squares of each color.  It was a bit of a pain to cut the tulle on my cutting matt.  The tulle was self clingy and just didn't want to stay lined up.  Plus with the white I could barely see it!


Each petals was formed with two 5" square pieces of tulle.  I folded each square in half along the diagonal, and then in half again to create a triangle with all of the raw edges along the long side.  I formed a running stitch through this long edge and then pulled it tight to form the petal.


I didn't cut the thread between the petals, and soon one petal grew to three, then four then five.


I forgot how annoying tulle is to work with.  Trying to keep two squares together to fold them and then stitch them was really hard.  Whoops!


I repeated this process until I had red, white, and blue star tulle flowers.  


Now that I had my three flowers/stars, I had to decide how to orient them on a headband.  I didn't want a crown going across my head, I was hoping for a more fascinator vibe.  They are a little too poofy to stack on top of each other well.  If I were going to do that, I shouldn't have tied the bottoms closed right away or I should have gradated the sizes a bit better.

Since these stars were going to take on a more flower appearance, and the center of these tulle star flowers is a little sloppy, I hot glued some rhinestones into the center of each flower.  


I decided to clump them close together.  You loose a bit of the star appearance, they definitely look more like flowers than stars now.


First, I glued the white star to a spot on the headband where it would fall on the side of my head.  Once this cooled, I pushed the sides of the white flower up so I close glue the blue and red flowers close to either side.


I think that if I wanted these flowers to have a more flower shape, versus trying really hard to stay flat, I could have wrapped the thread around the bottom, or pulled it even tighter so it wouldn't stay as a flat shape.


This headband isn't exactly what I envisioned when I started out with this craft project, but it is certainly patriotic!


Patriotism isn't synonymous with conservatism.  I want to celebrate our country, while working to use my democratic voice to help encourage the change I think we need in our society.  I plan to use my voice and fight for the liberty and freedom of all members of our community.  This is what is in my heart as I gear up to celebrate Independence Day this year.


I'd forgotten how much I enjoy using my hot glue gun.  I really could use a new one that would give me some more control on stopping when the glue comes out, but for now this old crafting tool is serving me well.  


This is only the beginning of my venture into creating custom headbands and fascinators for myself.  Stay tuned for the construction of a similar themed Pride headband in the next post!