How to Make a Hair Scrunchie and Hair Band To Match Your Home Sewn Dress

Roses by E. Kruger

Take a scrap of fabric from the selvage and even it out on the crooked side,  with scissors. You will need a length of elastic that wraps at least three times around your hand when stretched because that is how many times you will wind the scrunchy around your pony tail or bun or "messy updo."  Lay the strip of elastic on the strip of fabric, and cut the fabric two times longer than the piece of elastic. If you want the scrunchy or headband to be more gathered, make the fabric three times as long.   To measure for the headband, just wrap elastic around your head to determine the length.  Then cut the fabric 2 or three times longer.

Iron a 5/8 inch or half inch fold at each end of the strip of fabric, and then fold the fabric in half, the right side on the inside, and the wrong side facing you. Press it.  The long strip is now folded in half, making it thinner.   Click on for more detailed view of that folded end.

How long or wide you make the strip is up to you. Experiment to see what kind of shapes and gathers longer, shorter, or wider fabric makes.

This is what those pressed folds look like. 

With the presser foot on the edge of the fabric, and a regular size stitch, sew the entire length of the fabric strip, including the folded edges. You see the wrong side or under side of the fabric is facing you, for sewing the seam. That will all be turned to the inside when the project is finished.

Attach a large safety pin or quilting pin to one layer of the strip,

and turn the pin around to push the head of it through the inside. It will turn it inside out.

Now attached your pin to the elastic.

You might consider putting another large safety pin on the other end of the elastic, just to prevent it from pulling too far and losing that end.

Start pushing the pin through the tube of fabric and when you get to the other end, pull the fabric completely through, so that the right side of the fabric is on the outside, and the seam is on the inside of the tube.

 I pull the pin through til I can see the other end, and then I stitch that end on the machine, reversing and then once again.  Then, finish pulling the pin with the remaining elastic through the opposite end.

With the pin still attached, and well out of the way of the needle, stitch the other end of the elastic securely , by backstitching several times.

Remove the pin and clip excess elastic, if any.

Take the two ends and tuck one into the other, pressing it flat with your fingers.

Stitch it together.

Pull all the gathers around so that the stitched area is hidden.

This is the headband. Pull the gathers to the top, leaving the sides and end smooth, and stitch the flat areas just below the gathers.

Here is a pictures of the dress in the previous post, which goes with the scrunchie which is wrapped around my hair in back.  One suggestion I have, now that I have worn the dress: if you have trouble zipping up the back, and you are a fairly experienced home sewer, I would recommend putting the zip in the side seam. Do that for little girls too, and they'll appreciate being able to zip their own dresses. The next dress I sew will have a side zip, or front buttons. 

The one below is the dress I showed, with the cumberband,  on the article, "The Importance of Feminine Dress"

I do like colors other than pink or red, so I hope to get some of my other garments completed. I am liking the new patterns a lot better than I have liked patterns in years and years, so I will try to show some of them and suggest what to do with them if you want changes made.

It will be a lot easier to find these hair bands and scrunchies if you will hang then on the hanger with the dress.

Here is a cylinder of shatter proof ornaments from Walmart that I am using. It is hard to find them in these colors.

I have some of them in a punch bowl.