Hasta La Ideas

Lee Meredith is a contributor at CraftStylish, a site dedicated to do-it-yourself art and design projects. Below she shares a creative way to transform old t-shirts into cute custom hairpieces!

I am a designer and maker of hats and I wear one whenever the weather allows, which means every day for months in a row here in the Pacific northwest, so when it starts getting too warm for wool on my head, I feel naked! I need something on up there, so I break out the silk scarves and headbands. I love making these simple, recycled T-shirt headbands, made to tie in back so they’re one-size-fits-all, and of course you can do whatever you want for embellishments!

You’ll need: a t-shirt, a sewing machine with zigzag stitch, and any optional embellishment materials (different-colored thread for top-stitching, fabric paint for printing, etc). Start out by cutting twice straight across the tee, all the way around to form a loop, double the width that you want your headband to be plus a little extra for seam allowance. The shirt can be any adult size, and the bigger the shirt, the longer your headband will be (but you can always cut it shorter if you want). This loop will have to be under the arms and above the shirt’s seam, but you can choose exactly where, so if there is an image on the shirt, place it in the middle of the loop. Another option, if you want to use a T-shirt image up by the arms but you want your headband to tie, would be to cut multiple strip pieces and sew them together into a longer strip. Recycled T-shirts are such a fun material to work with- be creative and have fun with it!

Head over to the CraftStylish blog for step-by-step instructions and tips to turn your own recycled tees into new hairpieces for the warm weather ahead!