How to Sew a Scrunchie

Lay your fabric flat and cut one strip 22 inches by 4 inches, or 56 cm by 10 cm. That single measurement makes one standard scrunchie. A rotary cutter run along a quilting ruler on a cutting mat gives you the straightest long edges, and straight edges make the 22 inch seam far easier to sew. Sharp fabric scissors and a drawn line do the same job more slowly.

Cut a piece of 1/4 inch elastic 7 inches long, or 18 cm. Go up to 9 inches if you plan to knot the ends together later, because the knot swallows about two inches of length. Old shirts, dresses and thrift shop offcuts give you all the fabric you need at almost no cost.

Fold the strip in half along its length so the two long raw edges meet and the printed side of the fabric faces inward. You are working inside out at this stage. The side you want on show stays hidden until you turn the tube in step four.

Push straight pins through both layers along the raw edges, one every few inches. Pins stop the two layers creeping apart over a 22 inch seam, which is where a wobbly tube comes from. Once you have made a few of these you will find you can feed the fold straight in without pinning at all.

Slide the pinned raw edges under the presser foot and sew the full 22 inches with a 3/8 inch seam allowance. Reverse stitch a few stitches at the start, run the seam, then reverse stitch again at the end. Those two backstitches are what stop the seam unpicking itself while you wrestle the tube right side out.

Pull the pins out as you reach them rather than sewing over them. What comes off the machine is a long skinny fabric tube, inside out, closed along one side and open at both ends.

Snip off the thread tails, then clip a safety pin through the seam allowance at one end of the tube. Pinning into the seam rather than the single layer of fabric matters, because a pin in the raw edge alone tears its way out halfway through and you start over.

Push the pinned end down inside the tube and feed it along, bunching the fabric over the pin and pulling the gathered part through behind it. Keep scrunching and pulling. The tube comes out right side out with the seam hidden inside.

Attach a safety pin to one end of the 7 inch elastic and pin the other end to the outside of the fabric near the opening. That second pin is the one everybody skips and then regrets, because a loose elastic end disappears into the tube and has to be fished back out.

Push the leading pin into the tube and work it along, gathering the fabric down over the elastic as you go. When the pin comes out the far end, both ends of the elastic are free and the fabric has bunched into a ring.

Take both safety pins off and overlap the two elastic ends by about half an inch. Hold the overlap with a straight pin on each side so it cannot slip while you sew. Set the machine to a zigzag stitch and shorten the stitch length as far as it goes, which packs the stitches tight across the overlap.

Slide the overlapped elastic under the presser foot and under the needle, keeping the gathered fabric clear to either side. Run the zigzag forward and backward over the overlap a few times. This is the flattest of the three joins and the one that never works loose in a ponytail.

Pull out the two straight pins holding the overlap. Snip the elastic tails sticking out past the stitched join, cutting close but not into the stitching itself, and cut away any thread hanging off the zigzag.

Let go and the elastic springs back inside the fabric. The scrunchie now looks like a finished scrunchie with one open gap where the two ends of the tube meet.

Slide one raw end of the tube inside the other so they overlap, then fold the outer raw edge under itself by about an eighth of an inch and hold it with a pin. Thread a hand needle with doubled thread and knot the end.

Bring the needle up through one of the seams so the knot hides inside, then work a ladder stitch across the gap. Take a small bite of fabric from one folded edge, then a small bite directly opposite, and pull gently every few stitches. The thread pulls down between the two folds and the closure vanishes.