Now that we’re heading into the Christmas Season, we might just be bringing you some great ideas to make for friends, relatives, and others for Christmas. Today’s topic is creative hair barrettes. The first barrettes are made out of scrap fabric (you could make some to match the little girl’s dresses that you may be working on). Flower barrettes are very simple to make.
Cut a strip of scrap fabric 1 1/4″ wide and 8″ long for each barrette. Cut the long straight line with pinking shears, and the other side, also with pinking shears, but make a scallop design as shown above.
Sew a gathering stitch along the straight edge, and gather the strip to make a flower shape.
Tie the gathering thread into a knot after making the strip into the flower shape in order to secure the shape. Make a small round “center” for the flower about the size of a dime, also using the pinking shears to cut. Attach the flower center to the inside of the flower with several small french knot stitches using black thread.
Finally, using a glue gun, attach the flower to the back of plain metal barrettes that you get at any craft shop. These are so quick and easy to make that you can easily make and package several dozen to put on a wall in your customer area to sell throughout the Christmas season. Ours are yellow and smiley face colors, but little barrettes made in Christmas colors and designs could be a good sales item!.
Another cute little hair barrette style that we found at the AngryChicken blog could be made up to sell in packages of two or four, wrapped up to put in stockings, or just packaged up to give away to those good customers who have little girls just like the flower barrettes.
this house is way into barrettes.
I had this bag of plain metal barrettes from the craft store lying around and I always meant to cover them in a clever way and never got around to it. There are a ton in this bag. I’m not sure how many, but they are easy to find in bulk in the beading section in craft shops. I didn’t research any tutorials on making these, but I bet they are out there. Here’s how I made them:
1. I traced the outline of the barrette onto (wool) felt with my trusty water-soluble pen. I use wool felt because the other stuff freaks me out and these colors are to die for.
2. Then, I cut a second piece of felt out the same size as the first and laid it behind the top piece, trimming it a bit shorter in the length. I flipped both pieces over and sewed right on the drawn outline I made with the pen (the second shorter piece of felt will be on the bottom, so you won’t see it while you sew.) What you are making here is a barrette sleeping bag. I used brown stitching on the bottom so you can see it for clarity, but on the top, make sure the thread matches the felt, it’s much more forgiving that way.
3. I trimmed very close to the stitching with really sharp scissors. I tried pinking sheers too, and it was nice, but made the overall shape bigger than I wanted. I have seen edges done with baby scallops, and they are way cute, so that would be fun to try, too. I slid the barrette into its sleeping bag to make it all cozy and sprayed off any blue line left with water.
4. You probably don’t have to do this, but I sewed a little button/felt shape, like a flower of a heart, on top through felt and then the bars of the barrette, so it will still open, but the sleeping bag won’t slide off. The girls love these so much because they are “clothes” for barrettes, which means the felt gets taken off and lost. To discourage this, the sewn on embellishment/button keeps it altogether. They still try to undress them, however.
They are quite popular around here. Like so many things, it seems easier to make several of these barrettes, assembly-line style, than one at a time.
There you go —- spend a couple of hours making up a ton of them to give away or wrap up to put in as stocking stuffers!
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