Crocheting a Recycled T-Shirt Blanket

For those who like to do crafting and recycling, here is a great way to combine the two into one project. Take several, at least forty, old T shirts and cut the shirt, both layers, front and back, from arm pit to arm pit. Take the bottom section that you've just cut away from the arms and neck areas, and then cut the hemmed area off, both layers at the same time, from one side to the other. Now you should have a tube of stretch knit. Take this tube and cut from one folded end towards the other folded end, but not all the way to it. You want a strip of fabric, not a bunch of rings. This does take time, but it's worth the effort in many ways.

The top portions of the T shirt can be used to stuff pillows with, as long as the fabric used is sturdy enough. It is lumpy and not suitable for thin or medium fabric covered pillows. You should be able to have enough for a decent sized pillow to be stuffed with this, or doll or stuffed animal clothes, or even stuffed animals themselves, can be made from the scraps.

After turning several T shirts into strips, knot the ends, one to another, making sure you don't create any loops, and then roll the strips up into a ball form. You should have about five or six balls of 'yarn' in order to create a good sized blanket. These can be very colorful, and are very thick and heavy. They are also very warm, and have that cuddly feel to them. It's possible to use T shirts of different colors and see how the colors can be combined. You can vary them, or combine similar colors end to end to make larger stretches.

Using the rug crochet hook, form a small loop just like you would with yarn, making sure that the hook has enough room to move around in. You can vary your type of stitches, using double crochet, single crochet, skipped stitches to form 'holes', and so on. Be creative, and see what you can come up with. You can create a uniform border by using several shirts of the same color to crochet around the blanket's edge, as well.