Rag Rolling to Curl Hair

Lydia (5) is such a girlie girl. She loves clothes, make up (pretend dress up only at this point), babies, and has even picked out her husband to be. Let me tell you, she was created this way. It was not learned from me. Subject matter for another post perhaps.

More to the topic, she has been asking me for months to curl her hair. She has long, straight hair. It is fine, but there is a lot of it. It doesn't hold curl well. After the first time she asked, I braided it in lots of tiny braids one night after her bath.

The next morning we took the braids out, and she had a huge head of crimped hair. Not exactly curly, but she liked it. I didn't like how long it took or the fact the ends were still straight where I didn't get the braids all the way to the bottom.

The next time she had bugged me so much I couldn't stand it, oh um. . . I mean when she asked me politely, I used a curling iron. It also took quite awhile. It looked very pretty and I sprayed it well, knowing her hair does not hold curl very well. It was straight again before we got to church.

I've been promising her we would try something different. I don't use curlers. I don't own curlers. I really didn't want to buy curlers for my five year old. When all else fails, go back to the old fashioned way.

I decided to try rag rolling her hair. I checked a few sites online. If you'd like to see, I went here and here. Then last night we tried it.

The websites recommended using an old bed sheet. I didn't have one to cut up, so I used what I had. This is a rag the hospital gave us when we took Nolan into the ER. I cut the rag into strips about 1 inch by 6 inches.

Then I got her hair damp by dipping the brush into a cup of water and brushing out sections. I rolled the hair around the rag. Then, rolled to the top and tied the rag off. The sites said to tie in a bow, but I wasn't able to do that. I just tied them once and they held fine.

It did take a bit to get the hang of how to start the hair on the rag. Though it didn't show up in the picture quite as well as I thought it would, you can tell a big difference between the first side I rolled and the second.

All rolled up, we sent her to bed. She reported that the rags were very comfortable to sleep in, and didn't bother her at all. In fact, she said it was like having an extra pillow.

In the morning, Tim and I unrolled her hair. She had lovely curl. It didn't quite curl all the way to the top, so next time I will have to be more careful to roll all the way. She was happy with the curls. I liked them much better than the braids. Daddy was worried that she looked too pretty and is growing up too fast.



Of the three ways we have tried to curl Lydia's hair, rag rolling is by far my favorite. It is free. The time spent was about the same as the other methods, maybe even shorter than braiding. The results are much nicer. The curls were pretty and I may play with using larger sections of hair next time. The curls also lasted. At the time of this post her hair was still curly and pretty. So next time she is "asking politely," we will be getting the rag strips back out.