There is one thing many people don’t know about me – I love hair accessories! The reason why many people don’t know this is because for the first half of my life I sported a haircut unhappily named the “Mushroom Cut”, which did not permit the use of any hair accessories. Anyway, fast forward to 15 years later and you will find a girl (ME, in my head I still think of myself as a girl) who loves all sorts of pretty bows and clips. But above all, it’s the simple headband or hairband as we like to call it in India which holds a special place in my heart. I mean I have a separate Amazon shopping list only for headbands, so no exaggeration there. In fact, I watched all 6 seasons of Gossip Girl (at the ripe old age of 31) with the fascination of a teenage girl only for my love of Blair’s headbands. Well, I never managed to find headbands like hers in the market so I decided to do the only thing I could do – knit them. Therefore, today’s post is about knitting a simple headband that makes for a great hair accessory and is one of the simplest and fastest things to knit.

It also makes for a great gift. Just imagine the delight on the face of a little girl who likes bows and clips (like me), when she unwraps a beautiful hand-knitted headband. It’ll definitely make her day. The pattern today is for a Twisted Headband (courtesy of Mirelle Moments). Let’s begin!

Yarn, Needles and Gauge

Even though this is an ideal garment for knitting in the round, we won’t be using circular needles today. This headband is knit straight in the shape of a rectangle and once it’s bound off, the fabric is twisted and the two shorter edges of the rectangle are seamed together.

Again, feel free to choose the yarn and needle size of your choice. We are going to knit by keeping the length of the rectangle in mind so this is one project where you can give gauge swatching a miss. The final measurements for this headband for an adult female are 19.5 inches in length (which will become the circumference of the headband) and 5 inches in width. You can reduce the length of the headband if you want to knit for a little girl while maintaining the width.

Casting on

Begin by casting on stitches in the multiples of 3 i.e. depending on the width you prefer (and the yarn you choose), you can cast on anywhere from 30 to 42 stitches as long as the stitches are in the multiples of 3. I am using a worsted weight yarn with 3.5 mm needles so I am casting on 42 stitches to get a width of 5 inches.

Knitting the body of the headband

The headband is knit in a rib stitch. As I have mentioned before, the reason we use ribbing in any fabric is to give it elasticity, which is very essential for a headband. The pattern for the ribbing is as follows –

Row 1: *YO,  slip 1 stitch purlwise, K2Tog*,  repeat from * to * until the end of the row.

Row 1 requires you to start with a Yarn Over which is a bit tricky. The simplest way to do it is to bring the yarn in front before slipping the next stitch purlwise. Slipping a stitch purlwise means when you are slipping the stitch the points of both your needles should be facing each other. Once you have slipped this stitch, knit the next two stitches together making sure that your first stitch (YO) remains in place. These are the 3 stitches that you have to knit till the end of the row.

Turn your knitting now for Row 2

Row 2: Same as Row 1

As stated above, Row 2 is the same as Row 1, though you must bear in mind that the two stitches that you will knit together in this row will include one YO and one slipped stitch from Row 1. Since the entire row is knit in multiples of 3, the chances of making mistakes are very few.

Work Row 2 for 19.5 inches or till your preferred length. After a point of time, working the same row can get a bit boring but the repetitive motions are great for the practice of Medknitation. Try it out!

Binding off

Once you have reached the desired length, it’s time to bind off. You can bind off any way you like as long as you don’t make it too tight. I bound off my knitting in pattern, i.e. I used the traditional knit/purl bind-off but I purled the purl stitches and yarn overs and knit the knit stitches. So once you reach the row on which you want to bind off (and there is no right or wrong side to this work so you can bind off on whichever row you want), you will purl the first stitch, then purl the second stitch and then when these two stitches are on your right needle, you will pass the first stitch over the second stitch leaving just one stitch on the right needle. You will then knit the next stitch on your left needle, leaving two stitches on your right needle, of which you will pass the first stitch over the second stitch. You will keep binding off in this manner till you reach the end. Cut off the yarn attached to the ball leaving a long tail end of around 10 inches.

Twisting the Headband

Once you have bound off, you need to seam in all the ends except for the 10 inches tail you have left at the time of binding off. Now lay your rectangle on a flat surface and fold it in half horizontally creating a tube, like so

Pick up both ends of the tube and turn them towards each other. At this time the open ends of the tube would be facing in the same direction (downwards in the image below)

Give one side of the tube just one twist (like a toffee) in such a manner that the open ends of the tube are now facing opposite directions. Insert one end of the tube in the other creating a sandwich like in the image below

Now use a tapestry needle and the 10 inches tail end to seam together the four edges like so

Once you have seamed the four edges, your headband is complete. Now you just need to unravel it. This is a bit tricky and I found it difficult to describe it in words, so I created a short video (my first, YAY!) to show you how it’s done. The video can be accessed here.

That’s it. Your Twisted Headband is ready. Gift it to someone special or do a Blair and wear it like a Queen – the choice is yours. Hope you enjoyed making this simple but fun hair accessory.

~P

Materials that can be used to knit the Twisted Headband