Making a removable ribbon hat band – tutorial, Part 2

Hi, last week, I republished the post I wrote last summer for Britex Fabrics’ blog about making a removable ribbon hat band. That post showed my first design and discusses Petersham ribbon in detail. This is the second ribbon post I did for Britex. Though I added a couple of more photos and more words.

Here are the steps I took to make a second removable hat band for my old hat – combining a black-and-white striped Petersham ribbon and a solid black Petersham ribbon from Britex Fabrics. (Here’s a link to Petersham ribbons at Britex.)

 

I cut a 25-inch length of the striped and black ribbons for the crown of the hat and gently stretched and pressed them. (In my previous post, I had measured the circumference of the crown where the ribbon would go.) The striped ribbon wasn’t as pliable as the black ribbon so I required a little more tugging to get it to curve. (Please see my earlier post, which gets into pressing to make the Petersham ribbon curve. The ribbon won’t lay flat unless you slightly stretch the bottom edge.)

Next I pinned the solid black Petersham ribbon to the striped ribbon and used a ladder stitch to baste it in place.

It’s called a ladder stitch because the other side looks like a ladder. The striped Petersham was a little slippery, which is why I used the ladder stitch rather than a running stitch to baste the ribbons together.

Next I machine-stitched the ribbons together with two lines of stitching. I really like the look of the wide stripe in the middle!

Then I folded over each end of the ribbon twice, about 1/4 inch – just enough so that the length was a little less than the crown circumference of 23 inches. I’ll attach the ends to a piece of elastic to bridge the gap.

I machine-stitched the ends and then attached a 2-inch piece of wide elastic, securing it with a double row of stitches. One row of stitches follows the stitch line I made from sewing the ends of the ribbons. I used a longer piece than I needed because it makes it easier to sew. Then I just trimmed the excess after it was sewn.

The elastic looks like this. The elastic is the key to making a removable ribbon hat band. It’s like a headband for your hat!

Now I needed to figure out how to hide the elastic. I liked the idea of a pleated rosette but the two ribbons together were rather thick so I opted to hand stitch and gather one side to make a flower – just like making a fabric yo-yo. I basted one side of the ribbon using small stitches, about 1/8 inch long.

Then I pulled on the end of the thread with the needle, gathering the center. You can easily add more stitches to the ribbon if you want to made it even fuller.

When you decide it’s enough, stitch the ribbon together at the center and secure it with a few extra stitches and knot it. Then cut the ribbon, leaving an extra 1/2 inch so you can sew the ends together and make it seem like it’s natural pleat in the flower. I made sure to match the stripes.

Here’s the completed “flower.” You can barely tell where the two ribbon ends meet. It’s that fold on the bottom left.

To secure the center gathering, I stitched through the gathers to make sure they would stay in place. Then I attached it to the hat band, just in front of the elastic. The back of the hatband looks like this. You can see that I trimmed the elastic down to an inch.

And the completed hat band looks like this!

And here I am wearing the hat. I get a lot of compliments whenever I wear this hat. This ribbon completely changes the hat. The solid gray ribbon is a different look altogether. I need to make more ribbons for this hat!

You can play around with the placement of the embellishment and move it to the back or the front. Traditionally, the And that’s how you can easily make a removable ribbon hat band!