Monday, March 15, 2010

EASY Pirate Doo-Rag

With Buzz's pirate-themed birthday party over the weekend, I've got pirates on the brain -- and a few ideas to share! Today I'll show you how I made an easy pirate doo-rag for Mr. S. (Check that pirate-y sneer!)

I find that the secret is to use a KNIT fabric. It's more comfortable and has a little stretch, which helps it to stay on much better. I had a random bit of black knit fabric in my costume fabric box, but you could certainly recycle an old t-shirt too.

What you need:
Approximately 20" square of black (red would be great too!) knit fabric
approximately 5" square scrap of white knit fabric
5" square piece of freezer paper


STEP ONE: Draw a skull and crossbones on your freezer paper.


STEP TWO: Cut it out -- you are removing the inside part of your pattern and keeping the outside part! Fuse your freezer paper pattern to your square of knit fabric.


STEP THREE: Pin your freezer paper and knit fabric on one corner of your black square, so the bottom of the crossbones is about 6" up from the corner.


STEP FOUR: Using black thread, sew around the inside edge of your freezer paper pattern. I used my free-motion foot. (See why I love my free-motion foot in the short video under step four in this tutorial!) You can certainly use a regular foot -- it just means you'll be lifting and lowering your presser foot a lot to get around those curves and corners.


Of course I had to add some angry eyes!


STEP FIVE: Cut away the excess fabric around your skull and crossbones. Your doo-rag is complete!


I found the most FABULOUS how-to on tying doo-rags here! This particular page is perfectly safe to look at, but please note that it is a biker website, so photos of scantily-clad women are likely to be on other pages. Just be forewarned! :o)

5 comments:

Su said...

I love it! Free-motion foot will be my next purchase :)

CraftCrave said...

Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave.com in the Handcraft category today [15 Mar 09:34am GMT]. Thanks, Maria

Anne said...

Awesome!! I hadn't ever used freezer paper as a stencil/guideline for free motion stitching before. Will definitely have to give that a try the next time I drop the ole feed dogs.

I linked to your tutorial out on Craft Gossip Sewing:
http://sewing.craftgossip.com/tutorial-make-a-pirates-doo-rag/2010/03/15/

--Anne

Tami (Pixeltrash) said...

Very cute! I found you on The Girl Creative New Friends Friday. Just wanted to mention, unless I'm reading it wrong, I think there might be a typo in Step 2. Keep the outside of the freezer paper cutout, right?

Have a great weekend!

seemesew84 said...

I featured this on my blog today!
seemesew.blogspot.com