THE LEGEND OF BAD NANA'S HEADBANDS

My poor sewing machine has been largely ignored over the past decade.  Oh, sure, I take it out occasionally to pretend-quilt (throw together squares without much concern to angles and beauty, sew everything together, then tie it all off with tons of surgical knots), and sometimes I will sew a straight seam or two.  But I really gave it a workout last week trimming down some old curtains to use in my kitchen (in a place where I moved five months ago ... don't judge me).  So, I have been feeling rather crafty lately.

This is what urged me to try making headbands with buttons for mask-wearing essential employees (to spare their ears from elastic) and to sew masks for general use (pretty much epic failure on the masks).  The first headband was a semi-success (meaning I can't really sew worth a hill of beans), so I ordered a bunch of headbands (thanks to the smart recommendation of my sister) and a bunch of buttons because, despite the family button box full of leftover and errant buttons, not too many actually matched.

My daughter had to be my guinea pig and constant model during this initial headband phase:  "Come here.  Try this on.  How does this fit?  Are these buttons in the right place?  Let me measure your head.  Do you need a different width?  What about colors?  Here, try it this way.  Is this better?  Worse?  Do you want to slap me right now...????"

The end result yields thirty-three button-sided headbands for mask-wearers.  I have become intimately familiar with the button foot attachment to my old machine, an attachment that I used maybe three times about twenty years ago (or more).  The good news is that I only snapped two out of sixty-eight buttons into pieces when I wasn't in control of the machine and the needle smashed the buttons to oblivion (but the needle did NOT break .... SCORE!).  Headbands = Done, and done reasonably well, so well that I even name my endeavor:  Bad Nana's Headbands

Now, to master the fine art of mask-making.  Yes, I have watched countless tutorials.  Yes, I have tried four prototypes, the last of which was largely successful.  Either way, my sewing machine will probably either love me or hate me by the end of this.  Poor baby.  Maybe all it really wanted was to be left alone, but, like The Little Engine that Could, or, even better, like Mike Mulligan's steam shovel Mary Anne, this old machine has truly come to my rescue and outdone itself.