Thanks to my shop, I end up with quite a few beautiful fabric scraps. Last week I came up with a wearable way to use some small pieces of fabric. You really don’t need much to make these hair ties, which makes them perfect for those scraps you just can’t throw away.

Materials:
Fabric (lightweight will work best)
Elastic hair ties
Scissors
Sewing machine
Needle
Thread
Pins
Chopstick (optional)

Methods:
1. Cut a piece of fabric 3 inches wide by 18 inches long.

2. Fold your strip of fabric in half lengthwise, right sides together. Pin, and snip the ends at an angle.


3. Sew two of the edges with a 1/4″ seam, leaving one of the small ends open. Use the chopstick to help you turn the tube inside-out.

4. On the unsewn end, fold the raw ends into the tube, and press and pin.

5. Blind-stitch the open end closed with a hand needle and thread. (If you’ve never done this type of stitch before, here’s a good tutorial.) Or you could just top-stitch the ends by machine.

6. Loop the fabric around the hair elastic and tie a simple overhand knot.

To wear, loop the hair elastic in your hair as you normally would. Turn it so that the fabric knot is underneath your ponytail, then tie the fabric ends around your hair, covering up the elastic band.

I made a couple more with some other leftover fabric scraps. Throwing away any fabric bigger than my hand is impossible for me, so the polka-dot one is actually some fabric left over from a thrift-store dress I shortened.