Thursday, September 8, 2011

Project DIY: Twisted Leather Headband

Hi there! It's Melissa of I Still Love You. I love how the crafty and DIY spirit has caught fire on the internet. Around when I first started blogging (nearly 4 years ago), I was trying to explain to older women in my neighborhood what a craft blog was. Most of them would pat me on the back and tell me that it's a dying thing, what I'm doing. "People just don't make things anymore," is what most of them would say. And that is a fat lie! Don't you agree?

As of late I've enjoyed going through my leather stash and finding fun ways to use it in crafts, jewelry, clothing and accessories. Leather is so incredibly easy to work with and can be very easy to come by. Heck, head over to your local upholstery shop and ask if they're discarding any leather scraps. You'll likely find yourself walking out of the shop with a grocery sack full of pretty leather that's just the right size for something sweet. And if you do this, pat yourself on the back for me for rescuing valuable resources from the land-fill.

With those scraps you can do a number of things, but my favorite of the moment is twisted leather! I just made a bunch of pony tail holders using the technique and decided that a headband was in order. The headband takes very little time and very few tools.



You'll want to follow the directions from the Twisted Pony Holder tutorial and make the following changes:
  1. Use the pattern available at the bottom of this post for your headband
  2. twist the right 4 and the left 4 in opposite directions of each other
  3. start twisting the headband by inserting the end into the middle slits first


You'll assemble the headband with elastic cording, just as the tutorial explains. If you don't happen to have a hole punch, grab your Xacto knife and puncture the leather with that. Thread the cording through as normal. With the headband, I decided to double up the cording, but that's not entirely necessary. If an elastic headband isn't your thing, go ahead and hot glue your leather onto a headband form and you're ready to rock and roll! Click the button below to download the pattern.


This tutorial/freebie is free for personal use and should not be distributed/republished without my consent. Altering the file NOT ALLOWED. If you would like to use this tutorial for commercial purposes, please email me. Thanks!

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Thank you, Melissa!

xo,
Ruche

2 comments:

Knitful Dezigns said...

O MY! This is soo gorgeous, and positively perfect for fall <3 Thanks for sharing!!!

TERI REES WANG said...

How very smart and clever.
Cheers!