DIY Hair Bow Made From Recycled Material - Tutorial

I love recycling

Even with the limited options I have to do so currently, I still don't like to waste items if I can find a new purpose for them. In terms of fabric items, it's sometimes harder to recycle because I don't have a sewing machine yet, meaning I need to hand sew things, which is a bit of a struggle, especially right now with my hand. Nevertheless, I don't just throw away clothes if sometimes just has a few minor flaws and always check if there are buttons that I can take off for later crafts or that I see a way to recycle the fabric into hair accessories for example.

A vest with flaws

I forgot to take a picture of the cute vest while my daughter was wearing it, which is a shame because it looked adorable on her, but I can't change that anymore. It was one of these cute woven vests in navy and white that looked great on a few of her dresses. It's still t-shirt weather here in Spain, but in the mornings, I always make her wear a vest in case she's cold later or when an air-conditioner is turned on at school making her long for a vest. This vest turned out to be a pain in the laundry and very receptive for dust and hairs from the cat. Thankfully we have a brush for that but there is one thing that kept being annoying and that was the edge on the bottom of the vest, it kept folding up and in the washing machine somehow dust from other clothes would build up in there:

It's a shame but as it was hanging on the hanger for a week now for me to find another navy blue vest as well as taking the step to throw this one away, I decided to check it for things I could use in the future. The cute buttons were the first to be taken off:

While cutting them off I had the idea to make a hairbow from the vest by using the pockets:

That's the pocket inside out and I thought if I cut these off, I can easily sew that together making it look like a hairbow.

It was here when I discovered this was going to be a messy nightmare as with every cut, the fibers would fall off. I tired using a lighter to burn the edges but that wasn't very successful.

As you can see, the edges turned brown so I decided to not over use the lighter and see if I could make it work without burning the edges too much. I also cut off some of the edges with white because it's a great combo and I had the idea to create the bow with these in the middle:

Let the sewing and gluing begin!

Don't mind the image quality please, it has proven to be pain to have the real navy color shown in every image, haha. Let's focus on the end result... But first, one of the pockets needs to be sewn together:

Repeat the sewing with the second pocket and you can already see in the image below that this starts to look like a bow:

I first thought I could use the fabric with white edge for the middle part alone but once I discovered that this starts to raffle a lot, I decided a small strip of elastic would solve this.

I glued that on both sides.

Now I wrapped the two strips with white edge around the bow and made sure I glued it tightly, hoping no more fibers would come off after gluing it. I decided against the button last minute because I didn't see how I could see that on the bow without it being ugly, so I swapped it for these rhinestone applications instead. Here's the end result:

Now glue it on a hairclip or headband and voila, you have yourself a new hair accessory made from recycled material.

I like it and so does the little lady, so I guess mission accomplished. I'm not too sure if I will use the rest of the vest for anything now that I know what a pain this was to process. I will not throw it out just yet in case I get any more ideas.

I hope you liked this DIY tutorial, have a lovely day ahead!