School Hair Accessories

One of the few positives of going to a school with high turnover is that many of our friends give us their school uniform when they move. {many expats, immigrants who start in the city, families who outgrow apartments, home buying is prohibitive in the city etc} We have lots of friends who come and go {which can be heartbreaking at times but we feel blessed to know so many people the globe over}

I'm lucky to have a big box filled with every sort of uniform.

Some of these I've been holding onto for years waiting for Miss G to start school.

A couple of our uniforms were a little worse for wear and not suitable.

I saw a family member on facebook refashioning her kids old uniforms into hairbows and scrunchies and thought... aha! Just the idea I needed.

I have had lots of fun making scrunchies (haven't done that since I was 12 or so!!)
and little hairbows to match the girls school uniforms.

A wonderful way to recycle any old uniforms you might have.

To make a scrunchie

Take 2 rectangular lengths of fabric {about 50cm x 8cm}
sew down the long sides.
Turn out and you will have a rectangle.
Pin elastic at one end and pull through the fabric. It will scrunch up as you go.
Sew the two short ends together to make a circle, enclosing the ends neatly.

For bows

Sew 2 small rectangular pieces of fabric together {12 cm x 8cm approx}.
Go around all sides of the rectangle leaving a half length undone on the last side.
Turn the fabric out and you will have a little rectangle.
Handstitch hole closed.{or if you dont care about visible stitches, run through the machine}
Fold the fabric concertina style 3 times - giving you a little bow tie look.
Holding the fabric together run it through the sewing machine in the middle.

You can choose to leave it like this -
 and just attach onto elastic for a headband {I sewed the bow straight onto some white elastic}
you can also sew it straight onto a hairband {I used those soft style ones}.

For a more finished look I attached a 'knot in the middle' by creating another very skinny rectangle. When used this way hairbands and alligator clips can be hot glue gunned onto the bow.

Basically these are just mini versions of bow ties Tutorial here

This are fairly quick and easy and kinda addictive. I see 20+ bows coming from one old school dress.