Question for those that wear twists and battle shrinkage

[Je Ne Sais Quoi]

How do you wear your twists when you have so much shrinkage? My hair is shoulder length on the sides and almost APL in the back. When I twist my hair it is super super short. Anyone else? How do you wear your twists in this case? I dont always want to do a twist out so looking forward to hearing about what you do.

 

[Ivie184]

To combat shrinkage, I always twists on dry hair and use castor oil. I also twists my hair tight (not too tight) so that way they don't shrink as much. Another thing that helps is when I'm prepping my hair for bed, I will tuck the front behind my ears and pin the back up with bobby pins so that way when I remove them in the morning, I still have length. HTH. I have pics in my fotki if you would like to take a look.

 

[LynnieB]

i did some (the ones in the siggie) on damp hair that was already half stretched out.

i took small chunks of hair, brushed with the denman and put a tiny bit of qhem's amla and olive heavy cream on each one.........they hung low and long.

i've also twisted with jojoba oil and got good hang and no frizz that way too.

i got great "outs" from both methods.

i never keep them in for long these days, so anything past 5-7 days is uncharted territory for me erplexed.

 

[Je Ne Sais Quoi]

Thanks for the tips ladies. I need to make a few tweaks to what i've been doing in the past.
Lynnie your hair is just sick

 

[Twisties]

BreBre

I have not been able to combat shrinkage. I get hang for one day only. After that it shrinks into really teeny tiny twists...

Some people try banding or like LynnieB said, doing larger twists might help.

 

[JustKiya]

I do twists on dry hair that has been dried in braids, so it's as stretched as I can get it. As long as I don't get my hair wet afterwards, they don't shrink. I usually wear them up, so I don't know how much (if any) shrinkage there might be from the daily misting.....

 

[Ms Lala]

I twist on hair that is dry. I prefer how they looke when my hair has been blowdryed. If my hair shrinks I stretch it out by setting it on rollers.

 

[anon123]

Agreeing that twisting on dry hair and twisting tight provides less shrinkage. I don't generally prefer this look, though, because they are less plump than twisting on damp hair. But they should stay pretty stretched until you wet them. Also, after washing your twists, you can band the hair and leave it stretched to dry. Some people braids the twists and leave them to dry, but I'm not a fan of that particular crinkly look. If you like it, though, that could also work.

 

[Nonie]

Hey BreBre, I don't battle shrinkage but work with it, so I am really gatecrashing this topic but maybe some of my ideas might help you figure out what to do with your hair.

Since my BC, I've only worn twists on my bangs, not all my hair. But I can tell you of when I wore twists all through before BC and even back when my hair was much shorter, I didn't mind the shrinkage because it gave my twists weight. What I would do after twisting dry hair is dunk my head in ACV solution and let it drip dry so the twists would hang down.

Here's my locs look on shrunken twists worn during the weekend at home. I had just washed them and let them drip dry. I LOVED the rugged look!

When I had to go to work, I freshly did the twists, CW-ed and ACV rinsed rinsed them. No leave-in products added. After my hair had drip dried a little and was now damp, I'd put it in rollers. This was done the night before workday. Don't ask me how I slept in those hard things but I did. In the morning, I removed the rollers and found I had created a look that I got a lot of compliments on:

Front view:

When my hair got longer, about shoulder length, leaving it drip dry would have the twists hanging down like this:

Perhaps this is a good time to mention that if I applied anything to my hair, a type of leave in, it would shrink a lot more. A friend of mine applies products to weigh her hair down and stretch it; in my case that move would have the complete opposite effect: shrinkage magnified.

I never tried to fight shrinkage. I just worked with it. If I wanted a "tidier" look, I'd put my twists into pig tails while wet. The sides of the front of my hair is cornrowed to a point because I don't know how to flat twist. Having the front cornrowed helped me be able to wear my hair like Guapa's current do--a style variation from pigtails do:

Doing that on wet hair ensured the ends of the pigtails hung down instead of sticking up and out. An even tidier look would be to braid the ends of the twists so they look like a cornrow coming down and tuck the tail of the cornrow under the base of the pigtails. I've worn that look too, but don't have pics to show. (Sorry )

Then you've seen my updo and my braid-out on twists. The braid-out on twists, besides giving your a twists a new twist , will also stretch them a touch so the waves don't make them appear shorter than usual. To create it, I cornrowed my damp twists and let them dry in cornrows then undid and wore what looked like a shake and go.

HTH

 

[AFashionSlave]

When I'm in the mood to wear longer looking twists, I roller set and air dry my hair on huge rollers. The roller set stretches my naps. After my hair is fully dry I twist my hair. HTH!

AFS

 

[Guapa1]

Well I came in to say what Nonie said, and she said so much better than I would have.

I also band sometimes if I want to restretch my hair while it's in twists.

 

[glamazon386]

Twist on dry stretched out hair. They'll hang better. You'll just have to clip them down at night and wear a shower cap to keep them from totally shrinking back up.

 

[LongHairDreams]

bumping..... for usefull info.