I have a lot of hair ties in my home – I stock them by the dozens. Mostly because when I need one I never seem to find one. And one can get bored with the black and lack lustre hair ties pretty soon. A solution is to convert them into scrunchies with the favourite fabric of your choice. For me those are satin fabrics and denim.
Here is a step by step method to keep the hair ties inside the scrunchie and sew seamlessly. (You can also easily make these scrunchies with elastic inside)
You need around 20 to 24 inch long fabric for medium sized scrunchies (I mean, for tying thin to medium thick hair – for thick hair, I wouldn’t know :(sad face). Cut this fabric with 3.5 inch to 4 inch width.
Join the ends together at the short edges – right sides to the inside. Take your hair tie as well. This is all you need to make the scrunchie, and some sewing , ofcourse.
You can hand sew the whole thing, or machine stitch or do a combination of both.
Keep the fabric tube you have just sewn, wrong side to the outside (just as you stitched). Gather it by the middle into a bunch.
Insert the hair tie to the middle of this bunch. (or is it the other way around?) Insert the fabric into the hair tie.
Now bring the top layer of fabrics over the elastic – hold them together. But this is not the layer you should be sewing. Get hold of the layer under the first layer (this will give you the real tube with the fabric rightside to the inside- now pinch these together.
You have to sew the edges together. Ensure at all point that you are not stitching the layers underneath or stitching over the elastic.
Watch the video on making this to know it in more detail:
Continue Sewing the edges together – when you reach a point where you do not have the edges together, pull it from the inside and continue sewing.
This ‘pulling’ is a difficult part of this sewing project – which is why I would use only thin fabrics for making the scrunchies. Keep on pulling and stitching till you have nothing left to pull.
Take it out of the sewing machine and turn the whole thing right side out, over your hair tie.
You will have a nice scrunchie, albeit with a small hole. Slip stitch the hole closed by hand
or if you are in a hurry, and do not mind the visible stitches, (like in the denim scrunchie picture below), machine stitch from the outside.
