Another tutorial to help in saving our Mother Earth by turning unwanted items into something useful. This is the T-shirt yarn ball I made out of an old T-shirt which I have been wearing for 10 years day-in day-out, wash-in wash-out. It finally broke down and tore at the collar and sleeves. Waste not, want not, I decided to recycle it.
The T-shirt yarn is perfect to crochet and knit into a basket, bag, rug, scarf, etc…. I have finished making the T-Shirt yarn drawstring bag as shown below. Please click here to have a look and you can download the simple pattern I created.
Other than crochet project, you could use the T-Shirt Yarn to make purses, handbags, rag rug, stripy scarf, knit a rug, braid a rope, etc….
T-Shirt Yarn
Recycle Tutorial
Tools & Materials:
1. T-shirts (those without side-seam)
2. A pair of sharp scissors
Place the T-shirt flat on the floor or working table.
We only need the bottom-halve portion of the T-shirt. Cut horizontally from sleeve to sleeve as shown above. Cut away the end border of the T-shirt too. This useful” portion must be plain and free from printing, embroidery and any joints or seams. Any motifs will be too hard for the T-shirt to turn into tubular yarn.
Fold the T-shirt from side to side, leaving an inch allowance as shown.
Cut into strips as shown, remember not to cut the 1-inch allowance. Leave it there as we are going to use this to form a continuous strip.
The width of the strip will determine the thickness of your yarn, but the minimum is 15mm, anything less than this, the process will fail. The width shown here is 15mm.
Finish cutting the T-shirt from top to bottom evenly.
Unfold the 1-inch allowance and it will look as shown below.
The red lines are the cutting lines to be explained below.
The next process is to make a slant cut from strip 1 to strip 2, strip 2 to strip 3 and so on in order to create a continuous strip for the whole T-shirt. Please refer above picture for the slant cut.
I purposely leave the first strip uncut until I have finished all. No catch, just my preference to show you better how the slanting looks like.
Now, I have a long strip of continuous T-shirt yarn waiting for the next process.
Next is to turn the strip into a tubular yarn. All you need to do is tug the strip as shown below. Remember I told you that the minimum width of the strip is 15mm? The secret is…. if you have anything narrower than this, it will break once you pull.
See, the strip will curl and form a tubular shape after the tug. This process will lengthen the yarn too, which is good, so you have more yarn to work on your project.
….tug…
….tug…
….tug…
The strip has now turned into tubular yarn, from Fettuccine to Spaghetti ***wink***. You can roll your yarn into a ball and it is ready for your next project.
HAPPY YARNING!!!
I am a little confused, you say 15 mm for width of strips, but that is almost 6 inches. What am I missing? thank you
it is 15 mm not 15 cm. 15mm is roughly 0.6″.
That is a very helpful tutorial.
If you don’t mind, I am giving this link to the tutorial on my blog. If you wish otherwise please let me know.
Do I leave the sides uncut. It’s hard for me to tell in the picture
Please leave one side uncut when you are cutting the t-shirt in horizontal direction, that uncut side is reserved for the slant cut.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The tutorial is so clear…! Thank you for take the time to explain so clearly. A big hug.
Thanks for a great tutorial! ^_________^
Thank you! I have so many old Shirts here, now I have something to do 😀
It’s a great reycle idea. I always feel sad that I can’t use old T-shirt for any diy prject cuz it’s stretched while the color’s still good.
A rotary cutter and a metal ruler are much easier on your hands than scissors. Lots quicker, also.
It sure is easier, I bought a rotary cutter after I made this tutorial.
Thanks so much for the tutorial that makes sense! I have read about five tutorials about this but none of them made sense. Yours explains it perfectly!
this is very interesting.
This is great idea – wonderful structure, and useful.