Suffolk Puff Hair Tie

This is such a cute little thing you can whip up in under twenty minutes for your gorgeous girl. It requires no prior sewing skills – it’s very simple.

1. Some lovely fabric – ideally with a small print on it

2. A piece of cardboard cut in the shape of a circle. I have used an old cereal box for the cardboard.

3. A hair band; preferably in a colour that is on the fabric. I picked up a bag of elastics at my local supermarket.

4. A pair of scissors

5. A fabric chalk marker

6. Thread; preferably in the colour of your elastic band.

7. A needle

Instructions

1. Place your cardboard circle on the back side of your fabric and trace around it using your fabric chalk.

2. Cut out your circle using the scissors.

3. Fold over a hem of roughly 5mm; there’s no need to measure it out – just guess as it will make no difference to the final product. Once you have folded over a small section fold it across ways (just like in the picture below) and press it for a second, release and then move along the fabric and repeat until you have gone all the way around the circle.

4. Once you have finished step (3) your circle should look something like this:

5. Now it’s time to thread your needle and start sewing! You need to start sewing on the inside of the circle as demonstrated in the photo below.

6. Do a running tack stitch all the way around until you end up where you started; make sure that you finish with the thread coming from the right side of the fabric through to the back side, so you finish on the same side you started.

7. Now you need to pull the thread, slowly but tightly (but not too tight that the thread breaks) and the fabric will start to ruffle up as shown in the two photos below.

8. Once you have pulled the fabric as tightly as you can you need to tie the two ends together in a knot so that it doesn’t unravel. Make sure you do not cut the thread at this stage – you want to keep the needle and thread attached until the very end!

9. Now that you have tied off the ends of thread you need to attach the elastic band to the suffolk puff. Push the needle down the centre of the suffolk puff so it comes out the back where you attach the elastic and sew around the band four times so that it is secure.

10. Now you need to close the hole at the top of the suffolk puff by stitching it together. Once you have done this you then push the needle back to the side where the elastic band is and tie off the thread using a half-hitch knot as shown in the photo. The trick is looping the thread around the back of the needle before you pull it tight. Repeat the knot three times.

11. And there you have it – a super cute hair tie for your special little girl.