Rag Curls

So my Ainsley Mae takes after her Mama and is obsessed with all things Little House.  She is not like her Mama in that she loves all thing having to do with hair.  She loves getting her hair into all sorts of hairstyles.  Some are cute.

Some are...interesting.

So when she said that she'd like to try rag curls like Laura did on Saturday night, I was a little apprehensive.  Hair is not my thing.  Not that I don't love seeing her in adorable hairstyles, because I do.  But my ability to make her have adorable hairstyles is somewhat limited.  I told her I would at least look into it.  So I googled "rag curls" and found a million tutorials.  And all of them looked simple.  So I told Ainsley we'd give it a go.  Worst case scenario would be it would look horrible, and I would wet her hair in the morning and put it back in a ponytail.  The ponytail I've got down pat!

So I had Ainsley find one of her brother's old stained T-shirts that had seen better days and I cut it into strips.  Nothing fancy and even, just chop, chop, chop until I had 13 strips of fabric and no T-shirt left.  The more rags you use, the tighter the curls are.  Her hair was damp when I worked with it.  She had showered about an hour earlier.  I brushed it out, and then took sections of her hair and wound it around the cloth, like you would with a hot roller or a curling iron.  When you have rolled it up to the scalp, you take the edges of the cloth, bring it up over the top of the wrapped up hair and tie it in a simple knot, like how you start off tying a shoe lace.  In the end of the wrapping her hair, she looked like this:

Rag curls in

It was seeing her like this that I had one of those "Ah-ha" moments.  In the TV show of Little House on the Prairie, when Mrs. Olsen or Nellie is in bed, you always noticed these strips of fabric hanging out of their night caps.  I never thought anything of it.  But when I looked at Ainsley, I suddenly realized, "Oh!  They had rag curls in!!"

So Ainsley went to bed with rags in her hair, and in the morning, she got dressed and came into my bedroom to have her rags taken out.  Now, Ainsley's hair does not take very well to any type of curl, as much as she loves it.  Even with tons of product in her hair, it rarely stays more than an hour.  So I was expecting a loose relaxed curl that would disappear by the time she came home from church.  As I took out that first rag, I realized I would be wrong at least on the relaxed curl bit.

Rag curls first thing in the morning - sorry for the cell phone picture

She was THRILLED!  She has always wanted the ringlet curl effect, but her hair never cooperated.  I couldn't believe how curly her hair was!  She had Shirley Temple curls!  I decided to not put any product in her hair, to see how the curls held up.  By the end of the day, this is what her hair looked like (along with a sneak peak at our current home improvement project):

Just as curly as in the morning!

She went to sleep on her curls, and in the morning, her curls were more relaxed, but they were still ringlet curls!

Cell phone picture - 2nd day - more relaxed curls

No wonder all the prairie women were all about rag curls! What a cute way to style you hair and get it to stay when things like electric curling irons, mousse, and hair spray didn't exist!!  Give them a try!  Even the most stubborn hair holds up well with these!!