T-Shirt Yarn

I'm a fan of Factory Direct Craft on Facebook which has proven to be really *wink* frustrating for me. They post some of the coolest craft ideas and they aren't necessarily ideas that require you to buy their products. Tonight they posted a blog entry titled Upcycling: T-Shirt Yarn Necklace/Scarf. My first thought was, "Ooh, that looks neat!" then my second thought was, "How do I not know what t-shirt yarn is?" I quickly googled for instructions and followed a link to a youtube video that taught me how to make my own t-shirt yarn. I tried to resist jumping into it right away as I have a ton on my plate right now but, well, I lost out to temptation. In the end I made a neat t-shirt yarn headband (a smaller version of the necklace/scarf) but here I'm going to include just the tutorial for the yarn.

Tutorial: T-Shirt Yarn
Start with a t-shirt. I happened to have this great purple one from my husband's old workplace.

Cut off the bottom hem and discard (or give it to your 2 year old if it'll buy you a few more minutes to craft).

Starting with just one layer of the raw edge you just created by removing the hem, gradually trim in until you're cutting a 1/4-1/2 inch wide band parallel to the bottom edge. Continue to trim around and spiral all the way up to the armpits where you'll stop.

     

In the end, you can roll it into a nice ball of yarn. I found that stretching it lightly before I rolled it made a really nice round yarn rather than flat as the t-shirt had been. My helper thought it was pretty neat that his mommy just turned a shirt into a ball . . .

 . . . until I told him he couldn't have the ball to kick around the living room.

And then I thought, "Oh, why not, he was patient enough to let me do this little project, let him have a little fun."

And that was that. He grabbed that ball of yarn and ran with it.

We played for about 30 minutes before it was time to read books and tuck him in. Once he was in bed, I headed into the craft room to construct a headband using the necklace instructions from the Factory Direct Craft Blog. Instead of creating a gently wrapped 14 inch loop, I measured my head and used a 12 inch tightly wrapped loop (around a ruler actually). I only went around 10 times then used a length of left-over, of which I have a lot since this is a small project, to create the knot.

So there you have it, I made my first t-shirt yarn and then a t-shirt yarn headband. I still have quite a bit of the yarn left as well as a whole stash of t-shirts waiting to be turned into other things. My mind is spinning thinking of fun things to do with this yarn. I'm sure you haven't seen the last of this from me.

Thank you for reading