Party Hat Headband

I hope you were able to enjoy your Thanksgiving with your family.  We had a wonderful time with friends and family.  I'm a little sad it's over, but we have other big plans to execute.  For instance, it's the week of my little one's 2nd birthday party!  I know I've been talking about it forever, but it is this weekend.  Ahhhhh!!

I wanted to share with you a quick project that helped finish off her outfit.  After finding a sparkly pink cardigan at H&M that matched both the round and round skirt and the pink shoes, I knew I couldn't stop there.  I couldn't find just any hair bow or hair thing. It had to be special.  A girl only turns 2 once! A party hat with elastic around her chin wasn't going to work either.  I decided to make a party hat sans elastic.  After some material research and planning, I came up with a party hat headband.

Not only is this great for a party, but I think it would be an awesome idea for a photo prop!  If you want to make one of your own, here is what you will need:

Materials:

• scissors
• styrofoam cone
• scrap of fabric large enough to cover styrofoam
• medium weight iron on interfacing (size of fabric)
• glue gun
• small pieces trim or other decorations
• small sheet of felt or felt scraps
• headband

First, create a template for the cone.  The process for this is very similar to the one I used for the jack-o-lantern shades seen here.

Once you have created your template, try it out on the cone to make sure it fits.  Then, cut your fabric.  Leave about a half inch on the top and bottom extra for you to fold the fabric over the edge of the cone.  Also, leave a little extra fabric round ways so you can create a nice folded seam.

 Use the template to cut a piece of interfacing and iron the fusible interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric.  Make sure that you iron the sticky side of the interfacing to the fabric.  This step is necessary to make the fabric appear smooth.  If you glued the fabric straight to the cone, the glue would make ridges and ripples in the fabric.

You can see the interfacing sticking out on under the fabric on the right side.

Then, starting with one edge of the fabric, center the cone on the fabric and begin gluing.  Apply the glue to the interfacing (the wrong side of the fabric) and not the cone. I started by applying a long line of glue and pressing it to the cone. Once I had gone all the way around, I folded the raw edge of the fabric and glued the folded edge down.  This created a nice seam on what will be the back side of the hat.

Trim off any major excess and glue the top and bottom edges to the cone.  On the bottom, I just tried to make it as flat as possible.

Then, apply any trim or decorations to the top and bottom.  I used some of the tulle trim I had left over from the shoe redeux. I also used some matching tulle to create a pom pom that I secured to the top of the hat with glue and by piercing a paper clip through it and into the cone top.

Finally, glue a felt circle to the bottom of the cone. Then, glue a strip on top of the circle and sandwich the headband in between the circle and the additional felt piece.  

Here she was wearing her headband on her big day:

Easier Than I Thought! 

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