Many young girls like to pull their hair back with a fashionable "scrunchie," or fabric-covered hair elastic. These hair accessories are available in stores, but are limited in color and style. It's easy to learn to make colorful, no-sew scrunchies that can be tailored to a specific outfit, theme or holiday. Making homemade scrunchies is also a fun activity that can serve as a craft for a girl working by herself, or in a group.
Fabric Selection Key to Making Cute Scrunchies
The process for making a no-sew scrunchie is quite simple, and begins with a trip to a fabric store to select materials. While a solid material can be used, using two colors – especially a solid and a coordinating print – will result in a more attractive scrunchie. The possibilities are endless for color combinations. Good fabrics to use are sturdy cottons and blends. Satins and other hard to handle materials should be avoided. Some crafters like to use knit fabrics, but this will result in a scrunchie that has less volume.
Choose Colors that Relate to Holidays, School, Scouts, Friends
Scrunchies can be made in school colors, brown and light blue for Brownie Girl Scouts or to coordinate with a certain outfit. They are also perfect accents for holidays – green for St. Patrick's Day, pastels for Easter, red, white and blue for the Fourth of July, etc. Scrunchies in similar colors can also be made to add a unifying clothing item to girls on a cheerleading team or in dance recital. Best friends can have fun making some identical scrunchies that they can wear on the same day.
How to Make a No-Sew Scrunchie
Materials needed: two kinds of fabric, about 1/2 yard each, sharp scissors, hair elastics (available where hair band and barrettes are sold) cardboard, ball point pen
- Make a cardboard pattern that will be used to trace uniform strips of fabric. The pattern should measure 10 inches long and 3/4 inch wide.
- Using the pattern, trace at least 28 fabric strips, or at least 14 in each color. The tracing can be done with an ink pen; it's easier than a pencil and the marks won't be noticed when the scrunchie is finished.
- Cut the strips out
- Take one fabric strip and tie it onto the hair elastic, leaving equal amounts of fabric on either side of the knot
- Repeat with the contrasting fabric, pushing the second fabric tie very close to the first tie. Repeat the process, alternating fabrics, until the elastic is filled up.
Making homemade scrunchies is a craft that requires only material, scissors, a hair elastic and imagination. Girls of all ages, alone or in a group, will enjoy using a simple, no-sew technique to make a hair item that can have a multitude of variations.
Katherine Spitz - I'm a former newspaper reporter who focused on the "practical stuff" of life, as it relates to health/mental health, aging and food. ...
