Things to do with silk samples

I have a bunch of tie silk samples from the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. You can currently get piles and piles of silk, in reasonable sizes for scraps (they go up to about 6" by 10") for next to nothing. I enjoy having a stock of beautiful fabric that I can use without guilt. Failed experiment? I've invested less than $10 in probably 300 pieces of silk. I can move onto the next without angst.

As a result, we're all about silk these days. My camera pouch? Silk. Opal's crayon roll? Silk. Want a play crown? Silk. New bag for carrying stuffed dogs? Silk. Any of these things could be made perfectly well (and as I'll note later, sometimes a lot better) out of other scraps, although since the silk is actually pretty heavy, you may need to interface if you use light-weight cottons.

Headbands

Here are some beautiful step-by-step instructions for elegant headbands.

Or, if you are slapdash, this is what I do:

  1. Start with a piece of fabric long enough to go from ear to ear, with some spare, and twice as wide as you think a headband ought to be, with some spare.
  2. If you are feeling particularly elegant, fold it in half long ways and then short ways, and cut a gentle curve along the open edge from the middle to the ends, leaving the ends at least the width of whatever elastic you have on hand (half-inch or so is better than the really narrow stuff) plus seam allowance. I suppose if you were feeling totally elegant, you could curve both edges. Then you would have to sew an extra seam, increasing the sewing involved by a third! More than that if you count by length! More importantly, you'd need to get the edges symmetrical, which involves either folding it in half again, which is not practical with the thick silk, or using a pattern or something.
  3. Fold long ways right side to right side and sew the long edge closed.
  4. Hold it up to your head, and figure out how long the elastic needs to be. Be sure there are no witnesses to this step. Hold the elastic overlapped with one short end by a seam allowance worth. That goes in one hand, probably your left, which you hold just underneath your ear (the one on the same side, don't make your life difficult). Smooth the hairband over your head with the other hand, and then hold the elastic stretched so that it meets it. If you are making a hairband for a child and do not feel it would be rewarding to try this operation on the child, you can usually get away with doing the same thing but holding it so the elastic is REALLY stretched on you.
  5. Put the elastic inside the tube so that it lines up with one short end, and sew that short end closed.
  6. Turn the tube right side out.
  7. Fold the ends of the remaining short end to the inside and shove the elastic in with them. Double check to make sure nothing is twisted. (If you leave this check out, some 3-year olds will not notice the twist anyway. Well, mine hasn't so far anyway.) Topstitch that end closed.
  8. If you're feeling really elegant, and you bothered to rethread the machine with thread that actually matches your fabric, it would be really cool to topstitch around the whole thing at this point, and then the topstitched end would look all intentional and everything. Or you could just figure that the ends are behind your hair and your ears and nobody will know whether or not they match.

Crown

I know I've seen instructions for a lovely quilted crown online, but I can't find them now. It doesn't matter anyway, because although I always planned to do that, I actually did this reversible quick crown, which requires Timtex or some similar very rigid stitchable interfacing, and some reasonably wide elastic (almost anything over about half an inch will do):

  1. Take two strips of fabric long enough to go most of the way around the crown-wearer's head, and way wider than the tallest point you want on your crown. (You need at least two seam allowances extra width if you're using a sewing machine, but a bit more slack is good.)
  2. Fold one of them in half, the short way, and trace it on a piece of scrap paper. Draw points. Not too pointy. Cut out this pattern.
  3. Now you have two options.
    1. Put the two pieces of fabric together, right sides together, fold in half the short way, slap the pattern on top with the top of the tallest point at the top edge, and cut around the pattern. In this case, you're going to pin (or not) and sew them together as normal.
    2. If you have a fabric marker of some sort that shows up well on your fabric, put the pattern with the top of the tallest point a seam allowance width from the top, and trace the pattern onto the wrong side of one piece of fabric (you'll have to flip it over to do the second half). Put the two pieces of fabric together, right sides together, with the marked one on top. Pin them together well away from the marked line, stitch on the marked line, and cut off the extra fabric.
  4. Figure out how much elastic you need by the good old hold it up to your head and measure the elastic in practice method. Shorten the elastic somewhat if it's for a kid.
  5. Sew the elastic into each short end. You do this by putting the elastic inside, between the right sides, lining it up with the top of one short end and sewing that, and then lining it up with the top of the other short end (creating a wrinkly weird crown) and sewing that.
  6. Clip and trim the seam allowances so you can turn the points.
  7. Turn the crown rightside out, and trace it onto your interfacing, ending a seam allowance away from the short ends. If you have a serger, and you are willing to cheat horribly, you can run the interfacing almost all the way to the bottom; otherwise, leave a generous seam allowance at the bottom too.
  8. Cut out the interfacing and put it inside the crown, shoving it as far into the points as possible.
  9. More options.
    1. On a serger, set the stitches close together and simply serge the bottom. This works best if you are not trimming any of the interfacing, and you are trimming the fabric a bit.
    2. On a sewing machine, flip the seam allowance around the bottom of the crown (making it very slightly different on the two sides) and topstitch the bottom. This works best with a zigzag so you can be right at the edge.