Have you heard of nagorie feather pads? I hadn't, till a short while ago. These are sort of like bundles of feathers glued to a felt backing in a sort of large flower petal shape, tapering at the bottom. And the edges of the feathers are curled elaborately. They come in all the colors of the rainbow and even multicolored. Some have rhinestones glued to them. Here is an example:
So these nagorie feather pads have been popping up on a lot of hair accessories lately. Mostly for babies and toddlers, but you see them for women as well. Ask Google if you want to see. Headbands with these feathers are considered couture or boutique-style headbands, and I think they are really cute. They sell for about $10 to as much as $20 on etsy and I have seen them for even more at other online retailers. I decided to try my hand at making one or two. I ordered the feather pads off of ebay for $1.99. The pink one with rhinestones became an awesome headband for my adorable little niece (I have a lot of nieces, so there's always someone I could make hair accessories for!). Aaaaaaand, here it is!
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I am in love with the way this oversized piece looks on a precious little baby head. I found this beautiful pink and white elastic at a local store and knew it would be just the perfect thing to complete this. I made the flower out of satin ribbon. I gently rolled and twisted it in a somewhat spiral but not quite so structured fashion. This post gave me the original idea for how to do this, and I experimented on my own and discovered that I could get different effects by altering the materials used, or how tightly I rolled or twisted, or whether I rolled it in a perfect spiral shape or just kind of more freehand, getting several layers of larger and smaller rolls, which is what I did here. Then, I experimented with using a warm iron to lightly press down the flower, giving a bit more sharpness and structure to the twists but not flattening it out. I liked the effect very much, but if you try this, be sure not to make the iron hot enough to melt your satin. And I stuck a large craft gem (from a 99-cent pack of 100 different gems of various colors, sizes, and shapes) on the middle of the whole thing. While the flower seems very large, it is quite loosely twisted so it is just a puffed-up piece of ribbon, and I used a plastic gem for the center, which weighs a lot less than metal or glass. So, even though this is a large, showstopping hairpiece, it is not at all heavy on the baby's head. Some of the ones I have seen for sale use large, elaborate metal buttons or even vintage brooches, which seems to me like they must be way too heavy for a baby to wear comfortably, not to mention the weight pulling the whole thing down over the baby's eyes. This one doesn't do that!
It may be difficult to tell from the picture, but I also did a tulle layer to accent the flower. I basically just cut a bunch of 1 1/2 inch tulle strips longer than the width of the flower and arranged them like overlapping spokes of a wheel, gluing at the centers. This went underneath the flower.
I find it difficult to sew elastic, so I usually hot-glue the ends together, overlapping slightly. I glue the elastic to the embellishment with the seam part of the elastic at the felt underside of the flower or whatever I'm making. Then I glue another piece of felt on top of that, sticking to both the elastic and the underside of the flowers, so the elastic seam is sandwiched between the two pieces of felt. It is very secure and looks so clean that way. Also it's smoother and probably more comfortable on the baby's head. The elastic is nice and stretchy, so even though I made it to measure for a three-month-old, it will probably fit at least through baby's first year. DONE!
And here is a cute little person to model it for you.
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No babies were available, but I think it works great for a toddler, too!
In a future post, I will share a more grown-up version of a nagorie feather headband I made with the other pad I bought.
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