How to Make a T-shirt Towel

Before                        
    
After
     
Traditional terri cloth towels rough up your hair’s cuticle causing damage, tangles and frizz. The flat surface of the t-shirt helps keep the cuticle of the hair closed thus minimizing frizz, tangles and damage.
Items needed:

• Old large or x-large t-shirt
• Scissors 
• Pen
• Needle and thread or a sewing machine already threaded.
• Minimal sewing knowledge

Directions:

1. Lie the t-shirt flat on the ground or table.
2. Cut off arms

    3.   Cut along the side seams on both sides.
      4.  Open it up and lie it flat on the table. If the sides are cut choppy that’s ok you can fix it at the end.
     5.  On what was the front side of the t-shirt draw a straight line across the width of the shirt about 1 in. below the bottom of the collar.
      6.  Repeat on what used to be the back side of the shirt.   

      7.  Using scissors, cut along the front line. Repeat on the back line.

       8.  Place both halves with right sides together. Matching up the “collar” edges together and the bottom edges.

       9.  1 in. below the “collar” area sew a straight line across the width of the t-shirt. If you are sewing by hand, sew back over the line three times. Reinforcing the line will  help to ensure that it will remain tight through many washings.

       10.  Enjoy the look of your frizz free curls or straight hair with the help of your newly made t-shirt towel .
 
*After sewing the t-shirt back together I decided to straighten up the sides by re-cutting them so the finished product looked nice and neat.

How to Plop Your Hair With a Flour Sack

Yet another video for your educational viewing pleasure. Enjoy and please feel free to leave feedback.

My Story

Looking through my posts, I saw that I never really shared how I came to be where I am now, in terms of my curly hair. Here is my Reader’s Digest history. 

When I was but a wee baby….. j.k. :)  I won’t go that far back, but when I was a child everyone loved my hair. It  was soft, bouncy, and had beautiful loose ringlets, somewhere along the way that changed.  Honestly, as I grew up I was a bit of a tom boy. After about 2nd grade, when I needed the most help, I wouldn’t let  my Mom touch my hair. My hair became a long thick mess of waves and curls. I was a kid though and to an extent I didn’t care. Although, all the taunting and teasing did make me very self conscience about my hair over time. 

Through my preteen and teen years my hair was a series of bad haircuts that either grew out ugly or (when I was lucky) grew out well.  In 8th grade I began “straightening” my hair (I used the big barrel curling iron technique). When I became annoyed with dealing with my hair I  turned to perms to try to achieve “ the perfect curl”. The hairdressers never listened to me, and I almost always ended up looking like a poodle, or exactly the same but with trashed hair from the chemical process. Needless to say, I dreaded going to the hairdresser. It is ironic that as my career of choice  I choose be a cosmetologist. I was drawn to it admittedly for selfish reasons. I wanted to know how to style my hair; to know how to keep my crazy bush in check.


Amongst all the useful tips, tricks, tools and techniques I was introduced to, the  flat iron quickly became my favorite. My hair looked gorgeous, only it was straight. :( I continued to fight my curl for years. There were a few tricks that I was taught that helped me wear my hair “naturally” curly, but only if I wanted to devote 1- 1 1/2 hrs to making the curls look presentable. They never looked good the next day, so I rarely justified taking the time from my family to style it curly. My straightened hairstyle was always good for about 2-3days, so it seemed worth the effort to me.  A big draw back to straightening my hair was that I was always in fear of sweating or the weather. There was one special occasion that I spent 2 hours straightening my hair, but because the weather was very humid and misty by the end of the night my hair was in loose ringlets (that did not look good). 

By the time I had my 3rd child I was done. I was tired, my time was stretched thin, and I wanted to have a more “wash and wear style”. It was then that I finally began to find answers to my questions in a book. Three years later and I am still digging to find out more on curly hair but the results thus far have been extraordinary to me. My hair is curlier than it has ever been, I don’t spend hours on my hair and, most importantly, I have embraced me.  I wouldn’t go back and make the slightest change to my story, because it has made me who I am today.