Make It: DIY T-Shirt Yarn

Everyone loves T-shirts. If you are anything like me, eventually you can end up with so many they are avalanching out of the closet. Get a jump on spring-cleaning by sifting through your old tees and turn them into cool, colorful yarn.

 

From rugs to trivets to fashionable handbags, this handmade “yarn” is quite flexible.

Step-By-Step Instructions: Make It: DIY T-shirt Yarn

For those who are handy with crochet and knitting, it can be a great addition to your materials arsenal. You will, however, need to purchase larger crochet hooks or knitting needles than you’d use on regular yarn.

Make the yarn:

What you’ll need:

• Scissors
• Old T-shirts
• Broom
• Old wine corks

Step-By-Step Instructions: Make It: DIY T-shirt Yarn

First, you’ll need to gather up 4-5 T-shirts. They do not have to be the same colors, unless that’s what you’d like to do.

You want to stay away from any shirts that have printing on them below the area where the bottom of the sleeve meets the shirt – the armpit area, if you will.

Start by placing the shirt onto a clean, flat work surface. Flatten out the wrinkles and straighten out the shirt so that the hem is lined up.

Cut away the hem.

Remove the upper portion of the shirt above the “armpit area.” Cut straight across from side to side.

You should have now just the bottom half.

Place the shirt so the open ends are to your right and left.

Fold over the end closest to you and match it up with the closed side farthest from you, leaving a 1-inch margin at the top.

Start cutting your shirt into strips away from your body, making sure the margin is still intact. You can decide how wide you would like your strips to be.

Unfold the strips. Notice that you will still have the 1-inch uncut margin at the top.

The easiest way to do this next step is to run a broom handle between the two layers of t-shirt with the uncut margin resting on top of the broom handle.

Take your scissors and make a diagonal cut from the top of the first slit to the bottom of the second slit on the opposite side.

Keep cutting diagonally until you've reached the end of your shirt.

Now you have a giant T-shirt circle!

Make a small cut to break the circle and your ready to stretch it into yarn.

Take sections of the fabric – one or two feet at a time – and stretch them so the shirt material curls up and forms a tube.

Wrap your yarn around the cork to get the ball rolling. ☺

Wrap it around until you’ve created your ball of T-shirt yarn!

Now you are ready to make something fun.

Step-By-Step Instructions: Make It: DIY T-shirt Yarn

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Twinkle VanWinkle was born in a small town in Mississippi. A life-long lover of music, media and food, she grew up following those three things along her path. She has almost 20 years of professional cooking under her apron strings, feeding thousands of friends, family and other folks while working in restaurants and bakeries in Oxford, Miss. She baked apple pies for the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and appeared on Food Network's “The Best Of...” in the same year. Along with producing dynamic lifestyle content for LIN Media, she is a mother, musician and social media fanatic.

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