Upcycling t-shirts into yarn

Did you know that in the UK around 336,000 tonnes of our unwanted clothing gets thrown away every year? The good news is we have come up with simple upcycling projects to keep clothing in use, and out of the bin.

In a few simple steps t-shirts can be made into t-shirt yarn. You can use the yarn to make a plaited yarn bracelet or make t-shirt drawstring bags. This is a great way to upcycling old t-shirts and not let them just go to waste. With the t-shirt yarn, there are so many possibilities. You can plait, weave, crochet or knit them into dusters or facecloths.

Environmental Cost of Cotton T-shirts

Cotton is one of the most popular fabrics in the world. However, it also has a major impact on the environment. See this video and learn about the resources used in producing a cotton T-shirt. It also shows how to reduce your T-shirt’s carbon footprint.

Making T-shirt Yarn

This is how we make our t-shirt yarn to craft with. This video takes you through the steps. For another video on how to make a continuous strand and ball of yarn. Or if you don’t like the waste you can make yarn from the whole t-shirt. 

To make the yarn, collect together some old t-shirts.

Cut the t-shirts into strips. You can either do this with scissors or rotary cutter. Or you could the technique shown in the video above to make a continuous ball of yarn. This is done by cutting on the diagonal between each loop so becomes a spiral and a continuous yarn.

For the plaited bracelets, hair bands or key charms, cutting the t-shirt into loops like below is good too.  You can use a pair of scissors or a rotary cutter, ruler and mat.

After cutting the yarn, slightly stretch the yarn it rolls up into yarn and wind it up into a ball.

T-shirt yarn projects

An project to start with is Easy Steps to Make T-Shirt Yarn Bracelets. This is simple activity to do with children and they love that they have made the bracelet themselves. Its a very popular at events, we can run workshops on this.

Mary created the project for themed accessories for the Queens Jubilee. The school asked the children to wear something for the celebrations. It seems a waste to buy something new. So I decided to make some headbands and bracelets in red, white and blue by plaiting t-shirts I either had or bought at charity shops.

For other projects to use t-shirts for is for t-shirt drawstring bags. The t-shirt yarn is used for the drawstring. You can also use it for crochet projects, but it is difficult to get used to getting the correct tension so its not a beginners project.

Upcycling projects

We have other Upcycling Projects to inspire and please share your projects. We love hearing from our followers on what they have been inspired to create.