[Nfb-krafters-korner] Scrunchies

[Deborah Armstrong]

I’m new to the division; just joined and new to the list.

I wanted to share a scrunchie idea I’ve been knitting now for about a year.

Hair scrunchies are like those covered rubber bands only prettier.

I am still not a great knitter, and I wanted to find a way to practice new stitches and still make something useful. I also wanted to try using up leftover yarn and also working with multiple colors.

So I started practicing by making strips that were 2 to 3 inches wide, and long enough to wrap around my head, like a headband. I’d knit until the strip was  about 21 or 22 inches long, using my head if I didn’t have a tape measure handy.
Next, I’d bind it off and then fold it lengthwise and sew the long ends together with a tapestry needle.

The result is a tube, about 21 inches long resembling a glove for a pencil, if pencils needed gloves! Both ends of the tube are open.

I next turn the tube inside out so less of my uneven sewing shows. Then using a safety pin, I thread a piece of elastic (such as what one would purchase for making the waistband for a skirt) through the tube, and I then sew the two ends of the elastic together. I use a piece of elastic that’s about an inch wide and 7 or 8 inches long. Because the tube is about 21 inches and the elastic about one-third of its length, it pulls the result in to a springy circle, and my scrunchie is nearly done.

Last, I sew the ends of the tube closed with a tapestry needle being carefull not to catch up the elastic so it can move freely inside the closed tube.

I figured out how to do this by performing an autopsy on some ancient scrunchies. They are just long strips of fabric sewn in tubes.

This technique has been so successful that I made a ton of holiday scrunchies for Xmas with red and green yarn (weight cattegories 3 and 4) and got to practice several new stitches. The mistakes don’t show in my long hair and the ones with fewer mistakes were given as gifts.

I even sewed little Xmas bells on some of the holiday scrunchies, and put the smaller ones on the legs of my dogs when we marched in parades. (My working and retired guides are both therapy dogs and often visit libraries, nursing homes and hospitals decorated for the holidays.)  
For my friends with dogs, I sewed up these Xmas scrunchies, and called them “Jingle-Foots”; they were a big hit.

--Debee