This is completely unrelated to anything else in this post, but if you aren’t into baby crafts, go read this terrifically written story from Grantland, “Out in the Great Alone,” about following the Iditerod dog sled race. You don’t even have to care about sled racing. Read it on your iPad with a cup of coffee and bask in the weather we’re now finally experiencing.
Anyhow… Tim finally posted another update from his soon-to-be-father-of-triplets chronicles, so I thought it would be good timing to share what I made for the “Paluch 3-pack” baby shower. Tim is a huge Chicago sportsfan, so in addition to getting some bug-themed Eric Carle goodies for Gretchen’s entomology passion, I thought I’d attempt to make something a little sporty for the ladies. You know those big flower headbands that always seem to sprout out of baby girls’ heads? This is the sporty spice version:
I covered elastic with sweatshirt and jersey material (the jersey worked better, though) in Bears, Bulls and White Sox colors using techniques from this tutorial.
For the centers, I circles and a football shape out of felt – two for each piece – and blanket stitched them together. My circles are the size of the base of a can of baking powder, which I used as a tracing tool.
This was my first blanket stitching attempt and it was so easy that I might have gotten addicted! I embroidered the details freestyle. The baseball took a couple of tries. I recommend tracing the curves in disappearing ink and then making Vs along the line.
For the actual headband part, I used 14″ strips of elastic and about 18″ strips of fabric to cover them, but that really wasn’t enough to get a good scrunch, in retrospect. I recommend longer strips of fabric that you can always cut down if you need to.
I imagine you could always just use an existing lacy elastic headband, if you have one, and eliminate the need for a sewing machine. I may have messed up connecting the strips, because things didn’t end up as stretchy as I’d have liked, so hopefully these fit baby heads for longer than five minutes.
I used hot glue to attach the tulle and, to affix the ball shape to the headband. I made a third circle and football shape for each and glued the tulle to that, then sandwiched the headband between the tulle covered backing piece and my blanket stitched ball pieces. You can skip the tulle, if you like. Maybe go with a mesh instead, if you can find some? I put the ball over the messy looking ends that I’d sewn together.
Voila! This was a fun craft for me to try. I’m definitely going to be making some more baseball headbands this summer, and I’m sure I’ll finetune the process.
