Scrunchie- easy jelly roll hand sewing project

Scrunchies are one of the easiest hand sewn projects to make, and they are super handy. I use them at the gym a lot to pin back my hair. The ones above were made using jelly roll strips. If you've never done any quilting, you may not know about jelly rolls. They are strips of fabric cut selvage to selvage and 2.5 inches wide. There are lots of them available on Etsy. My daughter and I use them a lot for small sewn projects. You can make 2 matching scrunchies from 1 strip, 14 inches of elastic and thread.

You will need:

• 1 jelly roll strip OR 2 strips of fabric 22 inches long and 2.5 inches wide
• 1/4 inch wide elastic
• thread
• needle
• scissors
• safety pin

Cut the strip in half to make 2 22 inch strips, and cut 2 pieces of 1/4 inch elastic that are 7 inches long.

Fold the strip in half lengthwise, right sides together, thread a needle with a comfortable working length of thread, and make a couple small back stitches to start the sewing, then sew down the length 1/4- 1/3 inch from the edge. You can use a running stitch or back stitch. If you use a running stitch, make a back stitch every few inches to prevent accidentally gathering the fabric.

Put the safety pin on one end of the open tube through just one layer. Push the safety pin with the fabric through the length of the tube to turn right side out.

Attach the safety pin to the elastic and use it to  thread the elastic through the tube, gathering the tube as you go and being careful not to pull the end all the way through.

Bring the two ends of elastic together, overlap and stitch securely. Then tuck the edges of the tube in 1/2 inch, and slip stitch the ends together to close.

Repeat for the matching scrunchie.

This makes a good project for kids as well, and picking their favorite colors from a jelly roll can be a lot of fun. 

My new chou loom

If you look up the word シュシュ in Google, you'll find out that it means "chou" and that a chou is a scrunchie.
I asked Abigail of Abigail's Craft How To how to pronounce it, she said "shu-shu". There is a loom that's available in Japan for making them. It's a very simple pegged knitting loom. (Japanese site) This weekend, my husband and daughter teamed up to make me one.

The pegs are a little long and there are a couple other modifications that we've talked about making. But the chou on the loom is one that I knitted out of thrifted vintage acrylic yarn. I don't have any fuzzy or furry yarn handy or I've have tried it out of that. The wide open knit has a lot of stretch, and there is elastic in it as well. It's super easy to make scrunchies on the loom. They will probably make a few to sell in my Etsy shop. First there are a couple things that I want to work out.

I'm not a fan of acrylic yarn usually, this is from The Amazing Turnip Girl's stash.

This weekend I also made a pair of ear cuffs, that I'll be posting instructions for on Beadwork at BellaOnline later today. After trying a few ways to photograph them, I finally just put them on the loom.

I also made myself a very large hair bobble using tabletop skulls from Halloween. I'll post instructions for hair bobbles later this week!