Easy Rag Roller Curls

My little girl has perfectly straight blonde hair.  I have to make a date with a flat iron to get my hair as straight as hers.  It’s shiny and smooth and lovely. Naturally, she would like it to be curly.  Figures.

Unfortunately for her, that pretty straight hair is a bit fussy when it comes to curl.  Curling irons do nothing for her–all the curl falls out within fifteen minutes.  It’s just as well–I have gotten pretty good at say, french-braiding a moving target, but I am a little leery of brandishing a hot curling iron around a kid that can’t sit still.  Anyway, I remember occasionally sleeping on pink plastic and foam curlers when I was younger.  My mom would roll them for me and then I would have a terrible night of sleep and then I’d have cute little bouncy curls the next morning. Those things are wildly uncomfortable, although I distinctly remember telling myself that they weren’t so bad.

Anyway, there’s a far better way to get cute little curls and I have it on the best authority that it’s not uncomfortable, either.  Rag rollers!  It worked for your grandmother; it will work for you!  And best of all–they stay in place all day!

This is super simple, with just a little preparation involved.  Basically, you’re going to want some strips of fabric.  I personally cut up some fleece that was taking up space in my sewing room into strips about 1″ x 10″. This is a fantastic place to use your rotary cutter, but scissors will work just fine.  They don’t really even need to be that even or exact. I like fleece because it’s soft and fluffy, doesn’t absorb water, ties/unties easily and doesn’t unravel.  You can use anything you’ve got, though.  Your husband’s ratty old t-shirt that you would like him to stop wearing, for example.  Two birds? Meet stone.

So okay, you have your strips.  Now it’s time to introduce them to hair that wants to be curly.  Start with damp hair. I like to put the part in before I get started.  Section out a little piece of hair, place the strip at the bottom and roll up until you get to the very top.  Make a single tie–it should hold just fine, depending upon your material.

You can’t really see this in the picture, but I like to lay the strip on top of a pencil and roll it all up together.  When I’ve tied it off at the top, I just slide the pencil out.  It’s easier to roll that way, plus it helps keep all the curls even and not quite so tight, and it also minimizes the chance of funky ends.  The pencil is completely optional, though–I don’t always do it.  You also should avoid laying them out in a perfect grid–your curls will hang funny when you’re done. Off-set every row so each row has room to hang down next to a curl, not on top of one.This is really easy to do, honestly–hard to mess it up. You can experiment with how tight you roll them and the placement–it will determine how big your curls will be.  It took about fifteen or twenty minutes to roll her entire head–I could have done it faster if I’d been trying, and if she hadn’t felt the uncontrollable urge to get up and dance to Phineas and Ferb in the middle.  My child, she’s got rhythm.

Now, the easy part–sleep on it!  In the morning, before you take them down, make sure you feel them to make sure they’re completely dry. if they don’t feel dry, you can use the hair dryer to speed up the process.  When my daughter’s hair was shorter, I started with wet hair and it worked great.  Now that it’s longer, though, I like it to be a little less wet. Last time I did it, they were a bit damp when I took them down because I didn’t test them or use the hair dryer. It worked well, though, because we weren’t in a hurry and I just told her not to touch them for a little while until they finished drying, and then I styled them.  A little of the curl fell out but it looked more natural.

Once you get done pulling the curls out…

Ta-da! One curly girl, ready for church!  These curls stay in really, really well.

 

As cute as little curly girls are, I must confess that I am secretly glad that I don’t have to deal with curls every day. Maybe it’d be easier with practice, though.

She loves having curls, but she’s still just five and there are things in life more important than hair.  She didn’t keep these cute curls very long.  Here she is a few hours later.

Yeah, they hold up pretty well, but not if you dip them in water.  Just so you know.