DIY Fabric Wrapped Hangers - the Scrappy Way!

I love finding fun ways for using up different shapes and sizes of scrap fabric. So here is another one. It’s an easy, no-sew tutorial for making fabric wrapped hangers from those thin trimmings of fabric leftover when you square up a piece of fabric.

I’ve seen other tutorials for making fabric wrapped hangers but they often involve a very precisely cut width of all one type of fabric – they are pretty, don’t get me wrong – but since my starting point was how to use up these long thin fabric trimmings I thought I would try doing mine a bit scrappier!

BUT WHY?

In case your asking yourself – why bother? – there are two reasons actually:
1) It’s cuter than metal or plastic hangers and if you have lots of similar scraps it can make a hodge podge of hangers look kind of coordinated.

2) Just like the felt or velvet hangers you can buy these days, fabric wrapped hangers do a great job of stopping your clothes from sliding off your hangers and ending up in the bottom of your wardrobe or cupboard.

Supplies

Hangers – I used mostly hangers that came with clothing bought from stores that are plastic on the bottom with a metal hook (I do normally say no when they ask if I want to keep the hangers, but somehow we ended up with a bunch of them anyway!). I also had one all plastic hanger. You could use the same method with any type of hanger including super thin wire hangers – I just didn’t have any of those but I’m sure it would work.

Thin fabric trimmings. The longer the better but it doesn’t matter that much. I would actually say don’t use anything wider than an 1″ wide because those strips could be better used for other projects! Lets use up those skinny ones for this!

Glue Stick – just a standard kid’s glue stick will do the trick.

Step 1: Sort Your Fabric Scraps

So, I am a weird scrap fabric horder when I am doing any kind of sewing so I have several different bins where I keep different sizes of scraps. One of which is those super thin and long trimmings that you cut off (usually with a rotary cutter) when you are cutting a piece of fabric to a pattern size or squaring off a quilt block or something like that.

If it’s anything wider than these thin strips I save them somewhere else and use them for other kinds of projects so as it says in the notes on the materials for this project, if it is wider than 1″ save it elsewhere for something else. This project is about finding a use for those fabric strips that are too thin to hold a seam. Once you’ve sorted your scraps by size you can also sort them by colour if you like. If you have a lot of different pinks or blues for example you could make your scrappy hangers a bit more cohesive, or you could go all out scrap happy and just pick strips at random. I did a bit of both – random and vaguely colour coordinated so you can see from the photos at the end which look you prefer before you start.

Step 2: Start Wrapping!

They aren’t called fabric wrapped hangers for nothing.

Basically all you’ll be doing is wrapping these thin strips of fabric round and round your hangers…BUT…because we are using thin strips of variable lengths we do need to secure them somehow.

The other tutorials I mentioned above that use something more like honey bun strips can get away with tying on one end of fabric, wrapping all the way around and tying it back where you started. But if you did that with this method you’d have knots all over your hanger which wouldn’t help your clothes hang straight!

So you have two options:

Glue stick (this is what I used)

Needle & thread

I used a kid’s glue stick to secure the end of the fabric to the hanger. Here’s how:

Dab a bit of glue at your starting point – I tend to start at one end rather than the middle.
Place the end of the fabric strip on the glue then wrap the fabric around itself and continue to wrap all the way up your hanger as far as that strip will go – slightly overlapping your fabric as you go.
When you get to the end of that strip dab some more glue on the end of the strip secure it down and put another dab of glue on the top of it.
Then start again with your next strip.
The only tricky bit comes when you get to the middle of the hanger – when you start to feel the fabric is slipping back towards one end of the hanger throw the strip around the hanging hook to anchor it in place and continue back where you left off (see the video & photos if that doesn’t make sense).
To cover the actual hanging hook take a strip and dab a bit of glue in the top middle of your hanger, wrap around the base of the hook to secure the strip and continue up the hook. When you get to the end fold the fabric over the tip of the hook wrap around it to secure and continue back down the hook until you run out of fabric.
Lastly, if you have any of those little plastic hooks at the bottom of your hanger (like for hanging the little ribbon loops on skirts or tops) you can either clip them off or wrap them as well. I wrapped mine and it is the same process as the rest.