A Tshirt Carpet.. Part 1 of ?

Maddie and I are working on a Tshirt Carpet! How cool is that!!

With the crocheting a bust, I've started over doing a latch-hook style rug. Here is Maddie with the hook base. We had a couple of latch hook tools that we that might use. We found quickly that the tools were more work than they helped and our fingers were more nimble with the tshirt yarn.

Here are all the strips of tshirt.  They were part of the crochet rug that wasn't to be.

And here is a close up of Maddie's hands. You fold a strip in half, run it under and over an opening and pull through. (yeah, that makes since...)

 And here are a few of the loops. I was originally working in rows, but I quickly realized that I probably won't have enough strips for the whole rug, so I am now just randomly placing all my strips so that the colors will be mixed.

 And that's where we are at. I'm thinking it will be a while till you see part 2!!

Another TShirt Craft.. This one is more time consuming

Welcome back to my Recycled Tshirt Craft Extravaganza!!

Since we can only really use so many bags and scarves, I've moved on to my next recycled tshirt craft: A Rug.

There are a number of different kinds of rugs you can make. I am currently working on a crocheted rug. I MIGHT tackle the other basic latch hook kind if I don't burn out first.

This rug is not hard to make. Just time consuming, a little messy cause of the t shirt fuzz, and hard on the hands.

To make the rug, first gather shirts and cut strips. Personally, I keep the loops intact. Others cut the loops to have longer pieces and then cut a notch in each strip to tie together. Not me. I like the bulkier weave.

When you have a big pile, decide if you want to have your strips mixed up or together. I went with all one color together, but I think I would have preferred mixed. Too late now.

Now take a strip and pull it through the next strip to make a chain. I don't know how to explain it, you are just making a knot without tying a knot. Roll up the chain as you go. 

The ball of tshirt yarn is not quite the size of a basketball, but much larger than a softball. It is about 8 shirts worth of yarn.

Next, get a LARGE plastic crochet hook. The bigger the better.

Start a basic chain stitch. Or whatever crochet stitch you know or make up! Google how to crochet and you will find tons of tutorials!

I started working on this in the car on the way to the Texas Rangers baseball game on Sunday.

Make your chains looser than you think you should.  I am a tight crocheter and it always bites me in the rear the further I get in a project as it's more and more difficult to crochet in the next row.

After about an hour to hour and a half I had the rows below completed. The "rug" is about 4 feet long, so it took a while to complete one row. As you can see in the picture, I have used three different tshirts at this point. My hands were ready for a break when we got to the ballpark!

Bright and early this morning, I pulled out the "rug" and got to work while watching the Olympics. I go back and forth from one basic chain stitch to a fancier/bulkier stitch. At this point, I've completed a number of rows, but I have a feeling this project is going to take a while!

I'm planning to watch more Olympics tonight, but I got a massage this afternoon and am kinda sticky.. I don't know that I want tshirt fuzz to stick to all of my limbs!

And don't worry, just cause I'm stuck working on this project, it doesn't mean my tshirt craft extravaganza is over. I've got at least one more project in me!

TShirt Crafts: Scarfs

Another Tshirt Recycle Craft: Scarfs!

Here is Maddie modeling her purple tshirt scarf. I love the way she made it with two ties. It is so cute on her!! Even better, it was a tshirt that she never wore and now as a scarf I think she will wear it tons.

 Here is a step by step on how we made the scarfs.

1. Take an old shirt and cut it into strips. I didn't measure anything.

2. Take the strips and stretch them all out except for one. Save one for later.

3. Take the strips and hold them all in one hand, take the unstretched strand and cut it so that it's not a ring and then tie it around the set of strips. This keeps all the of the strips together. Decide if you want one tie or two and if you want the tie to have strings hanging down or not. I decided on the white one to only have one large band with no strings.

 4. Wear it. This scarf was made with a adult large shirt, so it's pretty long on a tween. But I think it will be great during football season for me.

5. Make more scarfs. I bought some pony beads today and am going to do a little decoration on the white scarf and other scarves that I'll make soon.

Enjoy.

T- Shirt Crafts

Warning!!!!

I live in tshirt land and I will be focusing the next few days on what to do when the pile of shirts is so great it takes up two drawers in the dresser.

These crafts will be EASY, almost no sew, and cheap.  AWESOME!!

First up... Gather some shirts.

Then decide what you want to make. a scarf, a bag, a rug?  [hmmm. are those hints about what it coming??? :) ] Today, I'm making bags.

I've decided that I'd rather make washable, reusable bags from tshirts than to keep buying the ones at the grocery store!  Here is Kylie modeling a bag. Adorable.



Step One: cut off the sleeves. Leave the seam!

Step Two: For a round opening, using a plate and  mark around the neck. For a square opening, grab a Kleenex box. It doesn't have to be perfect. 

Step Three: Cut out the opening. 

Step Four: Flip the shirt inside out and sew the bottom closed. Don't worry about the color of thread. Just sew it up.  This shirt sports four different colors of thread as my first set was the CHEAPO depot walmart thread and it kept breaking! So, I changed out the thread and bobbin and all was well. I think the last thread was for curtains, so who cares if it was cheap, but since this was for a bag that needed to hold groceries, I went with my good thread!

Also at this point you need to decide if you want the bag to be straight, have a little depth by angling the bottom, and if you want the bag to be the full length or to be shorter.

On the blue bag, I added detail stitching around the opening and handles. Yep, that's two colors of thread. I don't sweat the small stuff. Some people get so caught up on things having to be perfect that they never get the job done. Not this girl. Red thread and white bobbin. no problem! :)

Finally, turn the bag back right side out and there you have it!

Isn't my model gorgeous!

 
 And that's it. 3 shirts that were getting limited wear now get new life!

Another Fun and Easy Project for all those Paper Scraps!

What do I do with scrap paper?  Keep it or Toss it?

Yes, it is an age old question.

Well, I guess I am a both. A Keeper and a Tosser. It all depends on the day or the mood :) !!

But, one thing I do find difficult is to what to do with large scraps or whole pages of scrapbook paper that I know that I won't use. I hate storing things for storing sake.

So, below is one of my uses for scraps!

Recycled Paper Bowls. 

Sorry, I took the pictures with my camera phone, so the quality is sad.

This is really just a simple paper mache project.  I used ModPodge about 1/2 strength mixed with water and strips of scrapbook paper torn on all sides and a mixing bowl that I put a plastic bag over.  I ran the paper through the glue and smoothed it onto the bowl.  That's it.

I really like the torn white paper look inside the bowl. Originally I had planned to put another layer of colored paper down after the structure dried, but I think I will keep the bowl as is.  I might varnish it, I might not.

So there you have it, another recycled paper project!

An announcement, an invitation and a case for keeping scraps!

I love paper and I love organizing things, so you put the two together and I have TONS of paper scraps!!  

 

 

To store my abundance of scraps, I keep them color coordinated in 12x12 storage bags next to the bag of full sheets of coordinating paper.   There are times when I think I might be going a little overboard with my scrap keeping.. however, I have to say, I am pretty proud of my most recent use of scraps!

To begin, I made baby announcements for our yet to be born baby and had a lot of brown pieces of paper left.   Given that I had taken the time to score, sand and cut out half circles in all of these sheets, there was no way I was going to throw out  these good scraps! So I kept them thinking that maybe I’d find a use a for a few of the scrap pieces one of these days.

Well, my one of these days came along faster than I anticipated.  For my dad’s big birthday celebration coming up at the end of the month, I was able to use not only the brown circle scraps but also the scraps from the printed papers that I used as well!!

 

 

 

 

How fun it is to be able to use up something of value that a lot of people would just throw away!!

A Vintage Craft Project

I found these two “bowls” at a garage sale and just couldn’t pass them up. Nope, I have no attachment to them in that I’m not related to the person who made the craft or do I even know the people that were given the cards.. but I was intrigued nonetheless.

After talking to the daughter that was getting rid of these pieces, I am challenged to find a way to make something like this, but to also incorporate the signatures and notes inside the cards. That’s the reason she didn’t keep these treasures, there isn’t anything personalized on the project.

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Can you imagine the work that went into these pieces?? The cards have been cut out, laminated in some way, shaped and then stitched together. It’s just too bad that all of this work doesn’t showcase the people who got these cards.  I tell you, I’m gonna find a way to make something like this and include a picture of the person and some dates!

I’ll post what I come up with… whenever that may be :)
Have a great day!

Technique Tuesday: Recycled Magazine Basket

 

Lexi and I created this little basket yesterday out of magazine pages.  She had fun looking for “pretty” pages and then we tore them out, cut them up and wove them into a basket.

The instructions for these cute little baskets can be found here.  Since this blogger has done all of the instruction work, I am not going to repeat them here!!  Here baskets are better, but I did find that you do get better with practice, so we may just see what Maddie can come up with.

For my basket, I trimmed my pages to the full height by 7” wide.  Then cut each page to 3.5” wide by the full height before starting to fold.  My strips were about .5” wide. Finished dimensions are approximately 4.5” x 5.25” x 1.5” tall. If you want higher sides, keep the box more square and that will give you the extra weaving space.

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Last note, while some may not like the staples showing, I like the outside staples.  They look like stitches, so I might take a piece of twill ribbon and glue it to the inside of the box to hide the yucky part of the staple.  But then again, I might not since I am already using the box :)

 

Oh.. and one more thing, don’t you just love the pictures of my hands that Lexi took :) Not bad for a 4 year old!