How to sew a scrunchie

For day 11 of 12 Days of (upcycled) Christmas tutorials, I’m sharing how to sew a scrunchie! I made all 4 of mine from faded leggings or shirts but you could sew this same tutorial with quilting cotton, regular knit, or even velvet. Scrunchies are back in style, and still as functional as they used to be. My 3 year old has deemed them to be hers so she can wear them as bracelets, so it is a good thing that they are easy to sew since I’ll be making more of them later!

She inherited my fine hair, so I made sure to add a second size perfect for little kids. Isn’t her “whale spout” cute?

Sewing scrunchies takes me way back; I think they might have been the only present I made mostly by myself as a kid and felt really good about! I’m excited to try using them now. again.

If you like this project, you need to check out these posts too

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These leggings are so fun but the crotch is seriously pilly and developing holes. I rescued them from the goodwill outlet bins and put them to good use as an upcycle project!

The really nice part about this is, you can angle where you’re cutting to just hit the clean parts where there isn’t as much wear!

Here you can see both sizes and all the garments they came from. I think it took longer to write this blog post and edit the pictures than actually going to visit anything!

If we weren’t so attached to them, they’d totally be giftable. Would you wear a scrunchie? Would your kids?

Pin this tutorial for how to turn a t shirt into a pillow with this link or collage image:

Supplies

• 1/2 yard of elastic; mini scrunchies take 1/8″ wide elastic and regular ones take 1/4″ wide elastic
• Iron
• Bodkin
• 1/4 yard of fabric
• Hemostats or tube turner

Steps

Step 1-Cut a piece of fabric 2.75″ w X 21″ (2.5″ wide X 15″ long)  for the smaller size. Use your iron to press a hem on one short side.

Step 2- Fold the rectangle in half, length wise.

Step 3- Sew down the long, open end with 1/4″ seam allowance.

Step 4- Gently turn your tube right side out! I ue homstats to grab one end and gently pull it through.

Step 5- Cut 1 piece of elastic for each scrunchie; roughly 8.5″ long (5″ long for the mini). Use your bodkin to thread it through, holding on to the very end before shuffling the fabric out of your way.

Step 6- Overlap the elastic by 1/2″ and sew several times back and forth to secure.

step 7- Push the end of the raw tube into the folded over tube, rearrange to fit, and then sew over this seam to finish the scrunchie.

You’re done! Pull up your hair or your kid’s hair in style.