 friend who's a nurse in Washington state, one of the harder hit places for the coronavirus. And like many medical professionals right now, they not only need masks, they need something to keep the straps off the back of their ears. They're just their faces are bruised, the back of their ears are sore. And so I told her I could probably make her a couple of headbands with buttons on the side. Their idea is not mine. It's been floating around the internet since this whole thing started. And I told her I wasn't sure if I had the right kind of materials or enough to make her any, but I actually do. So she and I also both thought it would be a great video to share those of you who are making things for friends in the medical profession, or maybe you're donating masks, maybe you want to make a few of these too. Now this fits very tightly. If I measure around my head where I would normally wear a headband, my head's about 24 inches, hers is about 22. I made this so it fits tight on me so it should be good for her. And I just used what I had. And you hook the ear loops around the buttons and then it keeps them off the back of their ears. I'll insert some pictures here for you. All right. So as you're looking at those pictures, I will tell you that you're going to need some elastic. I used a woven elastic that's one and five and eight inches wide. You're going to need some knit fabric. It is better to have sort of a knit that has some spandex in it that has some pullback, bounce back pullback in it. Rather than a knit that when you pull on it, it just kind of stays stretched out. That's not what you want. You want something with spandex in it so it bounces back. But also, I prefer cotton spandex because it is softer and more breathable. In this case, they're going to have them on probably all day. And so you really want something as going to be as comfortable as possible, something that's as soft as possible. I only have, I did teaser. I didn't know if I was going to have anything that wasn't black. I actually don't. I have gray. Everything I have is like black, black and white dots, black, gray, like that's all I have. So we're going to use what I have. Anyway, I have a pattern piece. The pattern piece is cut a piece of paper that's about three and a half inches wide by about 14 inches long. And then cut your elastic to be about 19 inches long. Again, this is for to fit very tightly. If you have something with somebody with a really large head, like my husband has a really big head or a lot of hair, you might need to cut the elastic a little longer for them, maybe 20 inches. I found 19 worked pretty good and it held held very tightly without being too tight. So all right, so we're going to cut our fabric. I'm going to cut some black and some gray, and I'm going to cut a couple pieces of elastic and I'll be right. I will say if you're doing this like I am and you're cut literally cutting this out of scraps, this is too narrow right here. What I'm literally doing is piecing the scraps together before I cut my pattern piece out. So use your I'm using a serger, which is a four thread overlock. If you don't know what that is and you don't have one, you can use a regular sewing machine but use a zigzag stitch and piece your pieces together, making sure that the stretch, you want the stretch to go horizontally on the band, right? It doesn't need to go this way. This part's not going to stretch. It needs to go this way. So you want it to go this way for the stretch. So I'm actually going to cut this off. I'm going to sew these two together and then I have a couple more pieces that are similarly shaped. None of them are super huge and I'm going to go to the machine and I'm going to piece them all together until I get a piece that's long enough to make it work. All right, I'll be right back. Okay, you can see where I pieced a number of different pieces together here and then I'm just going to lay it as flat as I can and I'm going to put my piece, my headband piece on it with one short edge on the fold and I'm going to cut it out. I'm going to use a rotary cutter but you can use scissors. All right, so you're going to need a piece of knit fabric cut this way like the pattern piece. So it's one long, one long piece. Okay, and then you're going to need two pieces of elastic about 19 inches, which is about there. Now this whole thing is stretchy. So if your measurements are not exactly on, it's okay. Again, if you're making this for a particular medical professional that you know, you might want to ask them how tight they may or may not want it. If you're making this to donate, you might ask the donation place that's accepting the masks if they even want these. So double check first, don't go make a whole bunch of them and then have no place to have them go. All right, the next thing we're going to do is we're going to go to the sewing machine and we're going to turn this into a tube, this one and the black one. All right, let's go to the machine. We'll be right back. Okay, hopefully this is a good enough camera angle. My desk is a mess. I use this as a serger and what it does is it cuts and finishes the seam all in one step. When you buy t-shirts and things from the clothing store and they have this sort of finished sewn seam in it, that's done with one of these. Back in the day, I did a lot of sewing, I did a lot of knits and so yeah. All right, but again, you can do this with a regular machine with a zigzag. Fold your long tube of knit fabric in half lengthwise and zigzag all along the long edge or in my case, search. So now we have two long tubes. Now we need to turn them right side out. Now I'm going to use this fast turn tube. I will try to find a link to these in the description, put it in the description below. I got these from Nancy's Notions back again. These are really old back in the day. I do think they still make them, but what you do is they come in different sizes. I'm using the bigger one and I'm just threading it up the center of the tube and pushing it down. Then you have this little wire thing, you push up the middle, you grab that end of the fabric and then pull it down and it turns the tube right side out. Then I'm going to take my fast turn tube again and put the tube back on the tube of fabric, back on the fast turn tube. I'm going to take one of my pieces of elastic and put the wire back up the middle. I'm going to grab the end of the elastic. You could do this with a knitting needle and a safety pin. I have these, so I'm going to use them. It's much easier. So once it comes out the bottom end, I'm going to just hold on to that. I'm going to push the fabric up. We'll actually pull the elastic down until it's about an inch or so above the top of the fabric. Then I'm going to hold it. I'm going to push this all up like this and hold it. Push and hold because I want to take this off but I don't want the elastic to disappear inside the fabric because the fabric is much longer than the elastic. And just to make sure I don't lose that, let's put a clip there. You can put a pin there that will make sure that you don't have to do this all over again. So match up your little end of your fabric up with your elastic and then make sure your elastic's kind of flat. You want to do this on the other end. So now I'm going to take these two and I'm going to clip them together. I actually have a seam here down the center of the elastic. What I want to do is I want to turn it this way. So that's one. Now I'm going to do the other one. All right, so I'm going to take the black one. I've changed out my thread to be the same color since this stitching will show which isn't a huge big deal but anyway. I'm going to take my machine and I'm going to zigzag about a quarter of an inch away from the edge down all through all the fabric and elastic and hook everything together back here. I'm going to go back and forth a few times. Three, four, six times. This is going to get a lot of pressure so don't cheap out on the stitching. And let's do that. I want to fix this one piece of elastic that needs to go inside more. So I'm going to put it under the presser foot and we're going to do our zigzag. Cut my threads. Then I'm going to, you can see here there's all these raw crazy edges. I'm going to straighten them up by trimming them all the same. Then I'm going to open it up. I'm going to push what's left of the seam open as flat as I can and I'm going to zigzag a few times over that. This will make the back of it a little bit more comfortable when our nurses and other medical professionals have it on all day. You don't have this lumpy seam sticking into the back of your head any more than absolutely necessary. Stitching gives it some extra strength to hold together. Again, threads off. And then the next thing I want to do is I don't want all the fabric to be bunchy right here. So I'm going to push the fabric around so that it's even as possible all around the elastic which takes a little bit of fiddling but it's kind of important for the next part. Okay, so do your best to get it as even as you can. And then the next thing we're going to need is we're going to need some buttons. So find some buttons, any buttons will work. And let's go to the table and let's find some buttons. Okay, for this next part you're going to need a needle and thread, some scissors, and some buttons. So if you're like me and you've been doing mixed media for a while, maybe you used to do some sewing. Maybe you've got your grandma's old sewing basket. You probably have. This is just one of a couple of bins of buttons. So just look through here for some buttons. These ones were about, I think an inch. They're not quite an inch. Yeah, they're about an inch wide button. Um, that's probably, you don't want anything too small because you want the elastic mask straps to fit on it pretty well. I used to have a collection of crazy buttons like ducks and like weird stuff that this would be, if you have the, I don't have those anymore, but if you have those, this would probably be a great use for them because it would make something that's not fun, a little bit cheery. So we're going to use these. These should work. And you'll notice on this one that the button placement is about halfway between one end and the other. That, after trying it on a couple of times, that seems to be a good placement and lands it right about above and just slightly behind your ears. So I'm going to have this part where the two ends are joined be the back end. And then I'm going to just fold it half an eyeball it stick my finger there. And that's where I want one of the buttons. I should have like, let's thread the needle first. Holy cow. So discombobulated. All right. So we need a pretty sharp needle because we've got to go through elastic and everything. Let's use this one. I had a needle out earlier and I don't know where it's gone to. Hopefully I don't step on it. I'm going to use some gray thread. Now if you have buttonhole thread or quilting thread, use that. It's a little bit thicker and we'll hold a little bit better. I don't have any. So I'm going to just use what I have, which is your standard sewing thread. Now we've got our needle. Let's do our goes about there. I'm going to put my needle up through the underside to the outside. I'm not going to pull it all the way flush. I'm going to grab my button and put the needle through the button from the bottom. And then this is a four hole button. So I'm going to put it down through another hole and then back through the fabric and elastic back where I came out of. Then I'm going to come back here and I'm going to grab this loop right here by where the knot is holding the two pieces of thread together. I'm going to string the needle through there and then pull. I'm not just secures the back of the thread a little bit better. This is going to get a lot of pressure and wear right here. So then I'm going to go through the other two holes. And if you would normally sew a button on and you would do this through all the holes two or three times, I would say do a couple more times than that. Again, this is going to get a little bit of wear and tear. Have some pressure on it. So we want to make sure that it holds well for them. And the buttons don't come flying off. And it also gets it through the laundry. So the other reason for using a cotton spandex is that it's very washable. So whatever fabrics you're using, make sure they're washable. Now you probably could use t-shirt fabric, which usually is just some kind of plain cotton knit. But I would say that's another reason to make sure you put some good elastic on the inside because it's probably not going to bounce back. That little piece of thread just wants to be over here. Okay, so then once you do it the last time, come up with your needle underneath the bottom of the button, like that. Then I want you to wrap the thread around the button four or five times, then go back down out the backside and tie it off. That gives the wearer a little bit of extra room between the button and the fabric for that strap of elastic to go for the face mask. Gives it a little bit of a thread shank, if you will. I'd put three or four knots on here. You might even want to put a little bit of fray check or glue back here on the knot to make sure it holds. Tie the little ends in a knot and lay this out flat. And then just eyeball it where that other one should go. And I'm going to sew all the buttons on and I'll be right back. Okay, there you go. There's three headbands that my nurse friend can use when she's at work and hopefully save the back of her ears. These buttons are slightly off-center, but I think it's going to be fine. Anyway, if this gives you some other kind of idea of things that you can do, again, check with your local places that you're donating masks to if you want to make something besides just masks. Maybe they can use a few of these, but do check with them first. If you have a friend or relative that's in the medical profession, maybe they would like a few. We can't go shopping, so we have to use what we have. I happen to have the right materials, but use what you have. And I hope that it helps a little bit. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please do leave them down below. Let's start a conversation if you have other ideas of things that can be made that might be helpful to those that are on the front lines that are helping us out, not only try to control and eradicate the virus, but keep some sort of society running. Maybe there's something else that we can all do to help. I'd love to start a conversation. If you want to have it over in my Facebook group, A Life of Art and Self Expression, I'll link that down below. Don't forget to check out your favorite creatives here on YouTube and over in the Facebook art groups. Almost all of them have a way you can support the free content and almost all of them are providing extra free content right now that we don't normally provide like these headband videos. So do check that out. Most of them have something in their video description, myself included. So check it out and don't forget to like, share, and subscribe and to go out and have a great day. Stay safe, stay healthy, and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. And I'll see you later. Bye guys.