Headbands

Fall/Pre-winter has arrived. It was a cold, rainy, and windy weekend here in the Philadelphia area. 

Over the last few weeks I've been preparing myself for this.

I've been picking the last of the tomatoes green and red. The last batch of Melisse pesto was made.

The last and tallest sunflowers have bloomed and are about finished. Here they are peaking up over the top of the first floor roof.

 

It is lovely to see them in the morning. The bright yellow is so happy. 

The last bouquet of sunflowers for the kitchen was picked,  

 

and inspected.  

 

The cool weather also makes me want to get into the kitchen. 

 

I discovered this amazing recipe for Cauliflower Cake. Delicious! 

   

After all of my chores were finished, I decided to do something I've been wanting to do for a while, sit down with my book, Headbands: How to Work Them, and try to make them all. While I'm not particularly interested in the first few - I decided - if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to do all of them. 

 

For the first one, the bead is on the front of the headband, towards the foredge of the book. 

 

My workspace. I made a very small text block, only one sewing station.  These are the off cuts of another book. Really I just need the spine to be wide enough to get some good practice on the headband. The rest of the book is irrelevant (so far).  

 Start.
Half way.

Inspection:
 

Completed front: 

Completed back:

Conclusion: I learned this headband from Daniel Kelm some years ago and I think I like his method better. He sews from the spine edge which makes managing the threads a lot easier. But trying to stick with my resolution to do it as the book says, I managed, and I think it is okay. The other conclusion is - I am going to use the technique of gluing the core to the text block. I learned that trick from Don Rash many many years ago and it's the only one that makes sense. There is no point in trying to fiddle with something flapping around when it can just as easily be pasted down. I think it will also help with shaping. Currently, with no covering, the headband is very hard to shape as it has no support.
It will be a while before the next one. I need to make the text blocks first.