Surian - DIY T-shirt crafts: from braided bracelets to floor pillows, 50 unexpected ways to recycle your old T-shirts

Avon, Massachusetts

For Raya and Roman, who inspire me every day; for Kevin, who encourages me to dream big; and for the friends and family who have supported my creativity. Youre truly a blessing.

T-shirts. You wear them in, you wear them out. You lounge in them, work in them, and pick them up as souvenirs. A great T-shirt is a comfort, a wardrobe staple, and its what you wear when making some of your best memories!

T-shirts dont last forever, thoughyou spill on them, stain them, and outgrow them. But now you dont have to agonize over sending them to the T-shirt graveyard. DIY T-Shirt Crafts gives you fifty innovative and useful ways to turn your old T-shirts into jewelry, accessories, home dcor, and more! And you dont have to be an expert crafter to turn your T-shirts into works of art, either. Each project is designed with the beginning crafter in mind, works up quickly in an hour or less, and does not require the use of a sewing machine. In fact, some projects require little more than scissors and glue, and there are ways to use every part of a shirt here, right down to the scraps.

So whether you want to show off your style with a Braided Chain Statement Necklace or Rhinestone Button Boot Cuffs, update your home dcor with a Braided Yarn Bowl or Bleached T-Shirt Canvas Art, or impress your friends with a Wine Bag, Decorated Mason Jar, or Baby Pompom Hat, DIY T-Shirt Crafts is here to help you give your old T-shirts new life. Enjoy!

When youre looking at recycling your old T-shirts, there are a few ways to do it. The cotton jersey knit fabric that makes T-shirts so comfortable is stretchy and resists fraying, which makes it a great choice to refashion, to cut into panels and strips, and also to turn into yarn for woven, knit, or crocheted projects. Even cut into thin strips, its strong and easy to work with, and its a way of using up shirts destined for the trash in unexpected ways. Several of the projects youll find in this book call for a skein of T-Shirt Yarnthat is, a long, continuous strip of T-shirt fabric. Learning the quick way to cut a skein from the body of a T-shirt with a few targeted cuts will turn a shirt into a continuous skein of yarn in about 10 minutes.

When choosing the T-shirt that youll use to make your yarn, choose a T-shirt without side seams whenever possible. Womens shirts usually have seams along the sides, because they are fitted, but mens shirtsthe more basic, the betterare great for turning into yarn. The average mens XL shirt, cut 1" wide, will yield between 50 and 60 yards of T-Shirt Yarn, which is comparable to buying a skein of boutique yarn, and is enough to make one (or several) of the projects you will find here. To easily turn a T-shirt into a skein of yarn, just grab your T-shirt and a pair of scissors, and follow these steps.

1. First, cut the body panel off the shirt just below the arms, and remove the bottom hem. Do save these pieces, though; there are lots of projects in this book that just require scraps. A single shirt can be used to make several different projects!

   

2. Fold the panel in half vertically, so that the right and left sides of the original shirt line up. Rotate the panel so that the sides of the shirt face toward you. Beginning 1" from the edge of the shirt, cut vertically from the bottom to 1" from the top of the folded panel. Continue making these vertical cuts 1" apartunless your project calls for a different width of fabric. You can use this process to cut a continuous strip or panel in any width.

   

3. Unfold your panel. You will have strips of fabric that are still intact in the center.

   

4. Now, cut along the top layer only, making diagonal cuts, so that youre connecting one cut strip to the neighboring strip. Its all right to have those slight corners; if youre using yarn to weave, knit, or crochet, it will stretch and roll slightly, and those corners wont show in your finished project.

   

5. Moving the top layer of strips out of the way, or flipping your panel over, cut vertical lines in the bottom layer, connecting the initial cuts. The end result will be one, long, continuous stringwhich you can now wind into a ball to use as yarn in the projects throughout the book.