Making Yarn from T-shirts

Hi you guys. Welcome to our live event. My name's Brenda KB Anderson, and I'm a crochet instructor, also a crochet designer, and I really love doing experimental projects and sharing them with you guys. So I'm glad you guys are here. Um, I hope you guys are excited to learn how to make some t-shirt yarn out of old t-shirts.

Um, this is a project that's very near and dear to my heart because I am of the mindset that you can make things that are headed for landfills into treasures if you want to, um, and that is exactly what we're gonna be doing here. So, uh, it, it, you know, the whole fashion fast fashion industry is kind of depressing. It, it, it just is like something that we, we all need to learn how to deal with at some point here. We should be starting now, but this is like a little way that I make myself feel a little bit better. Um, you can save some t-shirts from going in a landfill, um, and turn them into something really awesome like this basket here.

So just in case you're wondering about this basket, in a couple of weeks from now, I'm going to be teaching you how to make this basket out of the yarn that we're making at this event. So. You will have a purpose in mind if you don't already have, uh, you know, something that is in your mind that you want to make um with the t-shirt yarn. So if you've never used t-shirt yarn before, you can actually buy t-shirt yarn at the store, um, and it is kind of like a rounded tube of knitted up, usually cotton, sometimes it's a mixture of cotton and some other synthetics, um, and we're kind of replicating that with this process here, but we're gonna be using t-shirts. Um, I I used up all the t-shirt, like leftover t-shirts that had holes in them.

They were things that I've just been saving for a while, meaning to turn them into yarn. I already used up all the ones at my house, so then I had to go out and buy some. So of course I didn't want to buy new t-shirts. Um, I was looking for something cost effective and also the whole purpose of, for me, the whole purpose of this, uh, exercise is to be able to take something that's headed for a landfill and turn it into something awesome. So, um, I, nearby where I live, there is a Goodwill outlet.

So for those of you who don't know what a Goodwill is, that's like a reuse, um, thrift store, so they just sell used goods, and there's Goodwills all over the country. And I think probably just the ones locally to me when they can't sell something at their Goodwill, like they have, I don't know, 4 weeks or something and to try to sell something and if it never sells, then they send it to the Goodwill outlet for like a last chance. And the Goodwill outlet is like a pay by the pound place. You will find things that have some flaws, maybe a little stain or a hole, because sometimes when you if people donate things and it has a hole or a flaw in it, they can't actually sell it at the Goodwill and it goes straight to the outlet. Um, so if you go to the outlet, you can get things for very inexpensive, like, I mean, I bought, I think 20 t-shirts or something for, cause I'm gonna be making a couple of baskets, um, and I think it was like, I don't know, it was less than It was less than $20.

So, you know, $10 a basket for a nice sturdy basket like this, I feel like is a pretty good deal. But you can make it for even less if you already have shirts at your house. Like when I was making this, I already had about half these shirts at my house. I had to supplement with a couple more, um, so that can really lower the cost as well. Plus you'll just feel good about it because you're turning something into, you know, something that was going to be thrown away into something really cool.

All right, this is a fun project to do because it's, you know, it's outside of the normal, you know, I love to crochet, I love to knit, I love to sew. This is just something that's crafty. It kind of fits into all those categories of things I love to do, but it's, it's pretty different, you know, because you're prepping the yarn itself, um, but it's very fun. It's very satisfying to turn it into yarn. All right, so, um.

Oh, I have a compliment on my top. Thank you. I did not make it. This is a top from the Goodwill, which is perfect, right, for a repurposing, a repurposing live event. Um, OK, so, um, for this basket, this is just to give you a frame of reference for this basket, I used about 9 size large t-shirts.

I mean, Actually I used a couple of extra large and then some tank tops, but it all kind of evens out to be about 9 large size t-shirts just to give you an idea of what you would need um if you wanted to make this in a couple of weeks or if you're thinking about another project just to kind of get you thinking because I really don't have a way of telling you how much yardage your t-shirt is going to make because you could be cutting it to any thickness, your t-shirt might be different thicknesses. Uh, it's just, you know, it's just the nature of doing something where you're using, um. Just random different t-shirts, you're just gonna have to do your best guess, right, to figure out how much yardage you need. Um, but that was about 9 large size t-shirts. And for this project, for the basket project, I cut my t-shirt yarn very wide, so because I wanted it to be a super bulky, probably like a size number 7 yarn, um, so that when I crochet it up, it's nice and stiff and it's not gonna be all floppy.

But you can certainly cut t-shirt yarn to much thinner, um, much thinner strips. It makes, uh, you know, like if you wanted to do a bag or, I mean, depending on the t-shirts that you're cutting up, you could even do, you know, an article of clothing out of it. You could even cut it that thin that you'd get some drape out of it. Um, mostly what I use t-shirt yarn for though is for bags, um, for baskets, home decor, pillow coverings, the kind of stuff that you wanna make out of like a really sturdy yarn that doesn't peel and it looks good and you can wash. It, um, because it's cotton.

So those are the types of projects that I normally use. All right, so I want to let you guys know that there is a link for the download in the description for this, for this live event. So in the download, you will get this and I have um Drawn out, well, I, I have like a chart of how wide to cut your strips as sort of like a guesstimate for how many raps per inch um in there, which you might find helpful. I also have, you know, full instructions on how to do this, including these really helpful diagrams to kind of help you remember how to cut things. um, so you don't have to take notes or anything.

You can use this, um, to kind of Help you remember this in conjunction with the video should um answer any questions. Um, there are many other ways to cut up, you know, lots of other methods you could use to cut up t-shirts. I'm gonna show you my, my two favorites. They're both included in the download. If we have time at the end, I might go into a third one, but I really feel like these two are, in my opinion, the best.

Um, also, at the end of the download is a little photo tutorial on how to link your strips together without sewing them. So we'll get into that too, towards the end of our, our, uh, live event. OK, so the first thing you're gonna do, of course, is get your t-shirts. So you're gonna, you know, find your t-shirts and look them over, see if there are any areas that you really want to not include in your yarn, like if there's a big stain and it doesn't look good. Um, or, you know, like, for, for me, when I thrift shirts, if there's like flecks of paint on something, I'll just cut it up and put it in my project.

I don't really care about paint, but if there's something else on there that I don't know what it is, then I will cut around it. Um. So you know, use your own discretion, but just sort of look over your t-shirt and decide if there's any areas you want to avoid, make a mental note, or you can just cut those right out of your shirt right away if you want. Um, the second thing you want to do is you want to look for anything like pockets. So like this shirt has a pocket.

I would take the pocket off because this is all usable. Like I've seen some other tutorials where people are only cutting up the bottom half of the shirt and not including the top half, which is fine. It's a lot faster. It's very straightforward, but you're missing like a good chunk of the shirt. So we're in this live event, we're going to be talking about using pretty much the whole thing.

Yes, there'll be some little scraps left over, but it'll be pretty much the whole thing. But you're gonna take off, you know, seam rip and pull off anything like pockets or other things like that. Um, then the next thing you're gonna want to do is you are going to want to decide if you want to undo the hem on your piece. So, for me, Um, this, this t-shirt that I got, this already, the hem was already halfway undone. I think that's why it was partially undone.

It was, um, already kind of, um, falling apart a little bit. That's probably why it ended up at the, the Goodwill Outlet, like many of these shirts, um. But if you want to use that extra fabric in that hem, you can rip that out. And I know that you might be thinking, oh, I'm not gonna do that. That's going to take forever, but I want to show you one little trick.

This is what I use all the time to undo this cover stitch. So, um, if you take a look here, There are Two rows of stitching on this side. So one row of stitching here, 1 row stitching here. Here. I'm going to flip this upside down so you can see what I'm looking at a little bit better.

So my t-shirt is now upside down. Here is the bottom hem, you know, facing, facing that direction. Um, and what you want to do when you want to, if you want to pick this out is you can start. By just picking out. Some little strands and you should probably use a seam ripper and not a pair of scissors like I'm using, but that if that's what you have, that's what you can use.

Just like this. So you can just cut through those two little strands, so each stitching line, and then you can use your seam ripper. I'm just going to use a needle here because I don't have my seam ripper with me, and I'm going to pull up these threads. I'm just undoing them just a little. Couple of stitches here, just so that I have something to hold on to.

I know you're thinking, this is gonna take forever, Brenda. Why are you doing this? But it gets faster, I promise. OK, so now we've got these two little strands, and then on the back, we're gonna hang on to those two little strands, OK? So, I'm gonna just pinch those two little strands and look at the backside.

Now we've pulled some of these little strands loose. And you can just grab one of those strands. And you can pull on it, and it'll just come apart. And what I'm actually doing is I'm pulling, see, these are the strands we seam ripped. OK, so this is from the outside of the t-shirt.

I'm holding onto those and I'm pulling on this strand at the same time. I'm pulling them away from each other here. I'll show you from the top view here like that. You're just kind of pulling them away from each other. Like this.

And that's just gonna undo. So you can just pull that hem right out. And the nice thing about that is because, you know, now you've got a whole another strand that you can work with or a whole another yard or 2 yards, depending on how big your t-shirt is, you know, you can use this now. You can just unfold it. If it bothers you, you can press it.

I never do that because this just ends up getting kind of wadded up when you crochet with it or knit with it anyway, um, as long as you can hold it flat enough to cut a strip, I just ignore that crease. Um, so, I'm going to be undoing this little part while I'm talking for a little bit here. This area right here is where this the cover stitch overlapped. So I think I'm just gonna have to pick that out by hand, um. But that's OK.

So this, this would definitely, I mean, if you have the patience for taking out your hems, it's gonna give you extra fabric. So I almost always do that unless I'm in a hurry, um, or unless the hen, like the edge of the t-shirt looks really dirty or something like that, then I'll just ignore it. Here, I think I'll just end up cutting this off cause, I mean, I could take the time to pick it out, or I could just kind of cut above this. Like that, and we'll get rid of that little bit right there. It's just a little section.

Um, one thing I wanna mention about if you're when you're looking for t-shirts, if you are, well, if you are looking for t-shirts, maybe you'll just be using t-shirts that you already are gonna get rid of, but, um, if you're going to be purchasing t-shirts, then I would recommend, you know, I mean, definitely go to an outlet. Don't be. Don't be worried about having seams in the sides of your t-shirts. This is another thing that I've seen a lot of um people commenting on, oh, you should get the t-shirts that don't have seams. See, does this one have a seam?

No, this one, this one actually does not have side seams. Oh, see, a lot of t-shirts are made in like a tube and there's no side seams on, on your t-shirt, and those are the best ones because you will not have to deal with those little seams being in your yarn. It makes it look much smoother. That's very nice. However, if I only got t-shirts that did not have side seams, I would probably have at least 10th of what I've got here in my little pile.

Like most of the t-shirts I have have side seams. That's, it's, that's what it seems like the majority of the t-shirts I find do have side seams. So I don't think you should avoid them. I think you should just not worry about it personally, and I'll show you what happens when you create your yarn and you have these extra little seams. If you're making something that's like a bag or a pillow or a basket, um, something that's a chunkier weight yarn anyway, I just don't think that it really detracts from how it looks, personally, um, but if you don't like that, I do have another method for making the t-shirt yarn where you won't, you won't end up with the seams in your project, and we'll talk about that in a little bit.

OK. I think this is pretty good. I'll just leave that hanging out on there. You will find, well, at least for me, um, You know, I can be pretty particular about a lot of things when I, when it comes to crafting and crocheting, but with this type of thing, creating the t-shirt yarn, I let a lot of things go and it looks lovely when it's all crocheted up. You really have a lot of leeway.

You do not need this to look perfect. You don't need to measure stuff, um, unless you really want to. OK, 00, OK, let me get caught up here. Oh, OK. We've got some people who are excited to be here.

Awesome. Hi Tyla, it's good to see you in here. Good morning from the San Francisco Bay area. So glad I didn't miss this. Such a good way to teach kids to crochet and how to make them make their own t-shirt yarn.

Yes, that is true. This is a really good yarn to have for teaching someone how to crochet because your yarn, your hook isn't going your yarn isn't going to split like, you know, applied yarns do, which is nice. Um, OK, so we have a question. Do, does fiber content matter with this project? Um, I don't think so.

I mean, you can certainly make the t-shirt yarn out of synthetics. You could make it out of cottons. I really gravitate towards the cottons when I, if I'm going out to get the shirts, I will look for something that's like mostly cotton, you know, like 80% or more cotton because it doesn't pill. Um, and a lot of times the synthetics, the knits, they, they do peel a little bit. Um, I think that this basket has a couple of colors in here had You know, like 10, 15% uh synthetic in there, and that it's not bothering me at all.

So I look for something that's a majority cotton, but that's like personal preference if that doesn't bother you or maybe yours, you take better care of your crochet items than I do, um, and the peeling is not going to be an issue, but for me that's why I gravitate towards the cotton, but this will work on anything that's a knit basically. Um you just, I mean, I wouldn't go out and buy a bulky knit sweater and try to do this cause it will fall apart. Anything that's knit with very fine thread. Uh, let's see. OK.

Oh, looks like we've got the download link in there. OK, good. Um, Marie says, just ask your kids. They always seem to pull the ham out, yeah. That's funny.

They'll know how to do that, right? OK. So, all right, so now I am um I've, now that I've got my hem all undone, you can also skip that step by just cutting it off. Now I am going to prep my shirt. So To get my shirt ready for method number one, which I like to call the spiral method.

This is the method that I use pretty much all the time. And the reason that I use it is because it's fast and it's easy, it's faster than the a little bit faster than the other method. So, um, So we want to see most of this in here. The overhead. All right.

So the first thing that I do is I cut off the sleeves because um you can use those, but you're, we're going to use them later. So I'm just gonna go in here with my scissors. You can also use a rotary cutter that can make things a little faster. Usually I cut off the sleeves, um, in, you know, all the way around instead of, um, you know, slicing through both layers at once, just so that I can really see where that seam is to save the most. Most fabric for making yarn.

So I'm cutting off each sleeve of my shirt. And it doesn't actually matter which side the seam goes to. So now I'm cutting through both layers at once. We'll see how I did. Yeah, I could feel that little seam there, so you can do that if you want to.

Um. And now we have basically a tube here. And another thing you can do, you can do this at any point. You can do it now or you can do it after you've cut most of the body, is you're going to cut along these shoulder seams here because there's always, almost always some kind of tape in here that's making it stiffer. It's really hard to use that section.

So I will just cut that and I will cut through the neckline as well, um, unless it's something that you want to save, you know, if it's in good shape and you do a lot of sewing, you could save that part for a different For adding to it, uh, you know, a knuckling of something else. So now we have a tube and then the top is split into two pieces. So usually I do this by just eyeballing it. And sometimes I will do this with scissors, sometimes I will get out a big mat and do it with the rotary cutter. Um, I think I'll try and show you both methods.

I'll do rotary cutter on this one here. So you can see, I'm gonna turn this sideways so you guys can see more what I'm doing. So, I'm gonna be cutting these strips to somewhere between 1.5 and 1 inch. 3/4, because I want to be using it for this, you know, the basket that I'm going to be making in a couple of weeks. Um, also, The the the width of your strip, you can adjust that in order to make, um, so let's just say for example, you've got 9 t-shirts.

Some of them are really thick and some of them are really thin. So, I would determine like how wide you want it for those thicker t-shirts or like a medium weight, a medium heavyweight, like, you know, this, this is an, I would say a medium weight, medium slightly heavier weight t-shirt. Um, for that, I'm going to be doing about somewhere between 1.5 and 1. 3/4 inch wide strips. But if you had some thinner t-shirts, like, I've got a thin one in here.

This pink one. This is probably more of like a pajama shirt. It's very thin fabric, and if I cut this to the same width as this and turn it into yarn, it's going to be thinner anyway because it just doesn't have the bulk that this t-shirt has. It's not as thick. So for this, maybe I would cut this at 2 inches or 224 or something like that.

I would kind of up the width of it so that that way, if I'm working on this project, Then, you know, using all these different colors in it, then that way, you know, the gauge will be similar. So, actually, let me show you how I failed at that on this basket. Um, this sort of yellowy green colored stripe here. This one was a much thinner yarn or thinner fabric, um, and actually this was a rib knit and so it didn't curl and we'll get into that in a little bit too. Um, this is sort of the anomaly in the basket and I sort of wish I had cut this one a little bit wider.

I can just feel that it's that little round there is just not quite as sturdy as the rest of it. It's really fine. um, I'm over it. You can tell I'm over it right by how much I'm talking about it. But, um, you know.

Hindsight, 2020, all that stuff. Now I know I needed to cut that one just a little bit wider. So that's why I'm telling you all this stuff. I've learned a lot about um cutting up t-shirts. OK, so I'm gonna be using my rotary cutter and I am just gonna eyeball this, but you can certainly, you know, if you have a quilting ruler or this type of thing, you can certainly lay your piece down like, like this, and then cut right along that line.

And what we're doing is we're going to be cutting from One edge of the t-shirt, so this is a folded side seam here, and we are going to stop about an inch or two. See if you guys can see this. OK, about an inch or two before this fold line here, OK? So, we're going to need to Just keep that in mind. You don't want to cut all the way across, because then you're going to end up with a loop, OK?

And actually, if you, Cindy mentioned that she watched the Pillarn live event and we did actually make loops and we looped them together, and that's a whole different technique. Um, this is a little bit different. We're going to be making a spiral. All right, this is great. All right, so now, you can see a little better here.

I've got my piece mapped out, so I'm about 1 inch.5 away from that edge. I'm gonna be cutting 1 inch and a half. Actually, I'm gonna bump that up a little bit. To just about 1 inch. 3/4 strip somewhere in between those two.

You don't have to be super careful about it, and I'm going to just cut along my ruler edge and I'm going to stop a little bit before I get to that folded edge right there, OK? And then I'm just going to keep on doing that, and I'm just going to eyeball this because it really does not need to be super perfect. This is something you can actually just do while you're watching TV. There's lots of um. You know, it's just sort of a, you don't have to think too hard.

So we're just making all these little strips here. And it's OK. Some are a little wider, some are a little narrower. Once you crochet it all up, it's not really gonna matter. So, if you, if on your shirt you have a design like this, but it's much thicker, like, if you had a screen print on there, and especially those lighter colors where they have to do it in a couple of um You know, a couple of different passes through with different colors and that sort of thing.

It can kind of build up and get kind of plastic-y feeling. You might wanna just see how that goes. Um, once I would just slice it up, and then if it doesn't work, you can take those sections out. It should be fine. Um, most of it is OK to leave in.

And see right here, this is a little, you know, this little area here is not quite as wide as it should be. It's, I'm not gonna worry about that. OK. So we've made our way. All the way up this part of the shirt, and we kind of have to, we just have to stop when it gets to be not a tube.

OK, so this part is already open because we cut those sleeves. We have to stop at this point. OK, so now what we have are these little strips, and then we are going to connect the strips so that way when we cut them, it becomes a spiral. OK, let me just rearrange this so that it's easier for you guys to see what we're looking at. So I'm putting my hand in here.

This is like where the side seam of the shirt would be if if there was one. So you guys can kind of see. And now what we're going to do is we're going to connect the strips, but not straight across. Do not cut them straight across, you're going to end up with loops. We're going to just kind of start right here at the bottom and cut an angle up to the very first strip.

That's going to be the beginning of our spiral. And now we're going to connect this cut to this cut at an angle like this. Like that. And I know that seems weird that we're gonna have that jagged line, but it's not gonna matter. We're gonna pull on our yarn, it's gonna disappear.

When you crochet it up, it really, you know, sometimes there's little folds and wrinkles and things like that, and it looks perfectly fine. So always just be connecting one cut to the next cut, and these will be diagonal. Diagonal slices here. OK. So now you can see, where do, where do we go?

Right? So, we've got this, this is all one long strip now. And we can cut, OK, I'm just gonna cut this neckline off because it's making the whole thing very wrinkly and it's kind of bugging me. So I'm just gonna cut this off right here. So that can lay flat.

OK, so here we have this section, and we're going to cut this section in a like a switchback motion, basically. I'm gonna turn it sideways so you can see what I'm doing. Actually, I'm gonna draw this out because I think this might be helpful to see. Um, before I cut it, let's see, I wonder if this will show up. Um, not super dark.

I'll use this color maybe. I think that's a little easier to see. OK. OK, so. At this point, here we are connected down here, so you can just slice up here.

This is, I'm just showing you where I'm going to cut, and this is not something you do not need to draw this out unless you are worried later that you won't quite know where to cut. Then you can draw it out to kind of give yourself a map, but after you do this a couple of times, you'll just be able to cut back and forth with your scissors, you know, you won't need to trace this out unless, um. Unless it's hard for you to eyeball certain widths. OK. So, we've got that, and we're gonna come, here's another line, and it's gonna come from that side, and it's gonna stop just a little before this edge.

And then here we go, we're gonna go this way. And we're gonna stop a little before that end. And we're going to come back over here and end here. So, for me, you know, I cut those sleeves off, and I've got a little bit of extra thickness here. I'm just gonna cut that off right now.

So that I don't end up with that with that in my piece. Get rid of that, and then we're going to just go ahead and cut in this direction. And when we get to the end, I like to do this little thing. This keeps it, I, I feel like this keeps it from ripping, so you can test this out on, on your own projects. But sometimes the fabric will tear as you're pulling on these strands.

We do need to pull on these strands later. So what I like to do to lessen the amount, you know, to lessen that issue is I take a little snip in this direction and a little snip in this direction. So basically, this is kind of like a Y. It's kind of pointing here, kind of pointing there, and then if you end up pulling on it, it's going at an angle, and it's less likely to rip, OK? So then I'm going to cut back in this direction.

So I'm gonna turn this around. And we're gonna cut this way. And there we are at the end. I'm gonna do a little snip here and a little snip here. And then we're going to cut the next strand, so every other one.

Um Like that, a little snip, and a little snip. And then we don't have a full piece or anything, so I can go ahead and just cut from this edge. I could certainly be using a rotary cutter. I just happened to grab my scissors here, um, or, you know, scissors work great too. So now when we are crocheting with this, you might be wondering like how do we do that?

It's if it's bending. When you pull it like this, it's going to straighten out and yes, you're going to have this weird excess here, but when you crochet it up, you won't even see it. So what I like to do just to make Make it a little bit more of a smooth transition is I'm going to cut off, there's a little bit of that shoulder tape in here. Um, so I'm cutting that off. But then I also like to kind of round off these corners just a little bit here.

You can even cut it at a little bit of an angle. You just don't want like a big triangle winging out because you can sometimes see that poking out a little bit from your yarn or from from your yarn when you make it. Um, so I usually just cut those off. And you only need to do this for the switchback method because you have that, you know, you're straightening out sort of a zigzagged piece when you make that yarn. OK, I think that's all of that.

And now, yeah, I think so. So let's start. We'll start at the end. This is where we just ended where all the switchbacks are, and you can kind of see them go by, see how they're sort of like that extra weird fabric there. So, when you make your t-shirt yarn, when you, after you cut your strips, you're going to stretch them, and that creates this tube shape.

It just curls right in, just like that, and makes it look really nice. And so be careful when you get to these switchbacks. Like I said, you know, we clipped in those little um diagonals, and that'll keep it from ripping quite as much. I can pull pretty hard, but you can see it's ripping just a little bit. That is not going to be an issue when you crochet it up.

It's not going to, you know, make your basket fall apart or anything like that. I mean, if you think about it, some of the yarns we use, if you yank on them, they, they come apart as well. So you're just going to kind of pull on that as best as you can. I usually start just before the switchback and a little bit after, because I'm pulling on this part pretty hard and then when you get to this, when once you start crocheting it up, you can just sort of like Pull it around like that. You can just kind of roll it up.

You can also just let it go however it wants to, and honestly, it'll probably be just fine. So But yeah, it's really only that sort of little switch back ends where we turn the corner that we need to worry, and the rest of this, I think that was it. The rest of this, we're just gonna be pulling on. To make it curl up all nice. Like that and then.

We can ball it up. And you can actually pull on it as you're balling it up. That's how I normally do it. But sometimes when I'm teaching a live event and I'm talking while I'm doing something, sometimes I forget things. All right.

OK, so we're gonna ball this up, and then I will show you how to cut up the sleeves, and then I will show you how to connect a strand of yarn to the strand of yarn. So you, I don't know if you noticed this, but when I pulled on the fabric and I made it curl. The outside, the exterior, the right side of the t-shirt ended up being hidden, and what you end up seeing is actually the inside of this t-shirt if you cut it this way. If you're cutting it in horizontal strips like that, usually because um this is like a a jersey knit, which is um basically this I don't if any of you guys are knitters, it's like a stocking net stitch. So there's like pearl on one side, knit on the other.

So when you pull on that fabric, It'll, you know, if you pull on it width wise, it curls up, um, and it curls, the curl goes towards the right side, so it like hides the right side of your shirt. So the reason I'm telling you this is if, if you have a shirt that has something on the outside that you want to be like you want to feature, like maybe it's printed with dots and you would like those flecks of color in your yarn. There is another way to cut it where it curls to the other way, and I will show you that in just a little bit. This can also sometimes work in your favor if you have a t-shirt and it has a little bit of paint or some kind of like a stain that you don't mind being part of your project. If that is on the right side of your project, a lot of times it doesn't go through to the inside.

So, It doesn't matter. So you just pull on it and it's like it just disappears in there and you crochet it up and you would never even know it was in there. So sometimes that works in your favor. OK, so then now we have like the leftover bit. This is from the front of our shirt.

So this is what got left behind because remember we kind of spiraled off the whole bottom of the shirt, then we worked the switch back back and forth across the back yolk. And so it could be the front yoke or it could be the back yoke just depending on how, like where your How wide the strips are and where the um the shirt stops being a tube and turns into just being back and forth flat because we cut the sleeves. Um, so, but in any case, you will have either the front or the back left over like this. So you can cut this up in the same way that we cut the back if you like. So I'm gonna cut off.

These little bits here. Uh So I'm just gonna eyeball this. So you can cut in this direction and stop before you get to the end. If you have one of those tourney mats, that would be useful here. Um, and then we've got another strip that we can cut.

Stop before you get to the end. And it looks like we don't quite have enough room to go across right here, so that's OK. Um, I'm gonna cut this neckline off. So we could probably just use this, I think. You know, sometimes you can't use every little speck of the shirt.

Like that. And we'll just get rid of those corners. And I'm gonna use my scissors to make that little Y shape that it, you know, you don't, you also might find that that's overkill for you and you don't feel like you need to do that. That's fine. I just like to do that cause I feel like as I'm pulling on it, I've accidentally ripped through.

Um, that little section, but once I started cutting the Y's in there, I never did it, so. I don't know. Anyway, so we got a little bit more out of that little section. Um, you could also add this too if you wanted. I don't know if it's worth it.

It's so small. We're just gonna set that aside for now. Maybe I'll add it later. Um, OK, and then let's talk about the sleeves, and then I will talk about linking your pieces together. OK, so the sleeves, oh, I'm gonna grab, oh, this one I already took the hem out of the sleeve here, or maybe it was already out.

I'm just gonna cut where this seam is here. Just gonna kind of release that, like that. Now we can see what we're working with here. And we want to keep this in a tube, because we can also cut this in a spiral. And I usually do just do this by hand with a pair of scissors, because I feel like that's the easiest way.

Um So I will start a little bit before the seam and kind of cut at an angle. Until I'm at. The width that I want my strip to be. So I'm gonna cut that off here, get rid of that. And here's about the width, you know, I want about 1.5 or 1 and 3/4 or so.

And then I'm just gonna start. Cutting I work my way around here. This is just a little easier to do by hand, and then you'll notice, you know, this is all of a sudden gonna turn and go up there, so you've got to follow. Just always be looking at how far away it is from this cut edge here. And there's a seam.

Almost always, seams are surged in these types of garments. I've never had a problem with my yarn, um, detaching here, although if you were cutting very thin strips of yarn, so like if you're cutting it at half an inch. Maybe even 3/4 of an inch. If you're cutting them very narrow and you want to crochet something at a lighter gauge, you should probably just test and see if those seams are going to hold while you're stretching it. I really think, you know, if they seem like they're not undoing, you don't need to worry about it later on for, you know, the longevity of your piece.

Once you crochet it up, there's not, you know, it's not going to be like pulling on that one little spot. It's going to be in a knot right in your in your crochet stitch, so you don't need to worry about it. But um as you're pulling on it to create that tube shape, you might end up ripping through your seam. I've never had that problem, but I've been cutting my strips pretty wide. I almost never cut them narrower than 1 inch, um, because I'm usually making kind of bulky projects out of them.

Also, I don't really have the patience to cut up a t-shirt into half inch strips. OK. So here, here, this is a little narrower than I wanted it to be, but I can see that after a little bit, it widens out. So I don't want to cut here like this and give it the full width because then this side's going to be really narrow and I won't be able to use that. So sometimes I'll just eyeball it and be like, oh, that's OK for a couple of inches.

That's fine. And now we're back to the width that we want to be. And now here we are, this section, I think I'm gonna get rid of that little, I've got that extra little bulk from the seam. And there we go. All right.

So we just got, you know, a little over 1 yard out of that sleeve, so that's pretty good. So, when you, when you've cut, and then you, you know, of course you could do that for the opposite sleeve as well, you just cut it up exactly the same way, and then when you want to link your pieces together. Um, maybe I will make this into a tube first. This one's gonna be a little trickier because it's got all those switchbacks, but. Here we go.

Um, OK, so to join pieces together, you can certainly sew them. Um, that's actually how I used to do it and then I got, it just took too long. I didn't feel like doing that. Um, so then I, I'm basically doing this way of weaving them together where it makes a knot, and this is very quick, easy, you don't have to get out of sewing machine. You don't, it just takes a lot less time.

If you wanted to sew it together. Then I would put them like this, so that they're um making a right angle, and then stitch from this corner to that corner and clip that off. Because what that'll do. I it'll make a bias seem like this, and it won't be one lump that's straight in that one spot in your yarn. So it'll blend in better.

It'll make it look a little bit smoother, you can do that. Um, I, I, it seems a little tedious to me, so I never do it that way. If I really, really don't want there to be seams in my piece and I'm cutting up a t-shirt that has side seams, I cut it in a different way, which I'll show you in just a little bit. But I just want to show you this in case this is a method that you'd like to use. You know, you could certainly use this method.

OK, so I'm going to be putting these strips together. All you need to do is just fold each end in half and cut a little slit. So this is, you know, between 0.5 inch and 3/4 3/4 of an inch away from that cut edge. I'm really cutting a pretty small hole here. Like the size for like my pinky finger to go through probably.

Pretty small, um, and I'm gonna do the same thing on this side. Like that. And I'm going to take my new strand of yarn. This is so this is the strand that's attached to the ball on my left. The strand that's in my right hand is just my new strand of yarn that I want to add on, and I'm going to just push it through that hole.

Push the new strand through the old strand like that until it's far enough through that I can access that same hole from the hole from the new strand. Actually, OK, I'll show you this again. Hopefully, if we'll have enough time. I'll show you this again when I have two strips of yarn and, oh, wait, what am I saying? I've got yarn here.

I'll just pull some off of here so you guys can see a little better. I'm just worried it'll be too confusing. Um. When you've got two of the same color. So, let me just show you.

All right, so we would cut a slit in each strand of yarn, and then you're going to take the new strip, put it through the hole in the old strip. And then let's just say this is not in a ball yet. This is just a strand of yarn. Then we're going to take the end of our new strip, feed it through that hole, and we're going to pull it all the way through. So you would have a much longer strand than this.

This is just a little, um, you know, demonstration with a little, little tiny piece here. And you can pull it through and it'll kind of tighten up like that. Let me move this out of the way so you guys can see what it looks like. It's a pretty small knot. It really doesn't take up that much space.

It links together. It looks really good. There isn't a big section hanging out or, I mean, I feel like this is just as neat as sewing it together. So that's why I've really switched to this method. All right.

So, I'm gonna get rid of that, so I don't confuse myself later. So you can just keep adding your strands as you cut them, just add a new strand on. Here, I'll do it once again to add this piece. Snip S New Through the old. And then the other tale of the new.

Through the slit in the new. And you just pull it all the way through. And there is actually a method to join a whole ball of yarn in this, in this way. Um, which I will be showing you guys at our next live event where I teach you how to make this basket because we're gonna be joining, we're gonna be using a bunch of different colors. We're gonna be having different colors are in the different balls, and we're gonna be joining them together as we go.

So there is a way to do that, and it'll look just like this. It's very cool, um, but I will be showing you that in the next, uh, our next live event in a couple of weeks. Let me just check in and see if you guys have any questions so far. Looks like a great use of the stripology ruler. Is that this my omni grid or?

I don't know what a stripology ruler is. You'll have to tell me, Twyla. I've never thought to make a basket using t-shirts. Thank you so much for this tutorial. Oh, awesome.

Uh, this joining method is like doing the Russian joint for normal yarn. Yeah, it is kind of actually, I mean. Yeah, it's similar to that because you're making a loop and sending it through and kind of hooking it back on itself. It's very similar. OK.

Um, OK, so we've got the first method, which is the spiraling method. I want to show you the other method in case you are making a shirt. That has seams and you want to make like a thinner yarn out of it, or um you really hate how the seams look. Actually, let me pull this in here so you can see what happens with the seams, and then you can judge. OK.

So here is a prime example right here, you can see those surged seams from where those strips came together. There's another one right here, that little bit there. They're like these little, little flaps, little bit of extra texture. There's one right here as well. Um, when I look at this overall, you know, when I look at this basket, it really doesn't bother me that I see those little bits sticking out here and there.

Um, but, you know, everybody's got their own, you know, some people might not like that. So if you are looking for um yarn that does not have those seams, then you will be using the switchback method only, um, and you can use it vertically so that way you have fewer switchbacks if that makes sense. Uh, let me grab another shirt here. Maybe this one will be better. We'll see what happens with all this printing.

I think it'll be OK. All right. Oh yeah, I pulled the hem out of this one already too, I think. Yes. OK.

So this method, this is a method #2 in your handout. Um, and this method, I also start out by cutting off the sleeves. Because I just don't like to have, you know, it just makes things a little bit simpler, honestly. So I'm gonna go ahead and just cut these sleeves off. And we can use the switchback method on those sleeves as well if you want, or you can use the spiral method that I just showed you on those sleeves, either way.

Oh, I don't know. OK, so this, this t-shirt has no side seams, so I'm gonna switch it to one that has side seams. Um, let's see. Wow, this one doesn't either. I kind of got the jackpot here with all these t-shirts without, oh, here's one with side seams.

All right. OK. Actually, I'm gonna get a slightly smaller one, so more of it, you guys can see the whole thing. OK, so this shirt, which is a lovely shirt, it's too bad it had all these holes in it. But you know, that's why it ended up being for me.

This shirt has these side seams here. Um, it also has long sleeves, which we can, I would probably spiral cut these instead of doing the switch back, but you could do either way, and we'll talk about that a little more as we go through this. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and cut the sleeves off. There we go, and we can go ahead and I'm going to cut along these seam seam lines because to me it's not worth the trouble of trying to cut it out quickly and cut through two layers at a time with this method because it really doesn't like to stay put. You'll see in a minute.

I, I just feel like it's not. It's not worth that. So I just cut the whole thing apart, like the front piece from the back piece. So I'm just cutting up my seam lines here, and I'm also gonna cut my shoulder seams just to make it a little bit easier. OK.

So normally I would pick out the hen, but I'm going to just skip that little step on this, just in the interest of time. Um, so now for this, for the switchback method, you can certainly do a switchback method in this direction, but oftentimes your t-shirt is longer than it is wide, not always, sometimes it's wider, and then maybe you want to do switchback in that direction instead. But this is a slightly longer in that direction. So I'm going to go ahead and just do the switch back, back and forth, um. Uh, in the lengthwise version or in the lengthwise direction.

So like I said before, when you, when you cut horizontally, your fabric if it is a, a jersey knit, which means it is, it looks different on both sides without getting into all the intricacies of that. When you pull on it, it's going to curl to the right side and it's gonna cover up, it's gonna like curl all around the right side of your fabric, so you'll see the inside of the. You know, what it looks like on the inside. It doesn't matter on this shirt because it looks pretty much the same on both sides, but that is something that could matter on a shirt, you know, if it's printed or something and you wanted the print, or if it was printed and you did not want the print on your yarn. So that might matter.

If you cut it vertically, it normally curls to the wrong side. So, meaning the the right side of your fabric, we're right now we're looking at the right side of our fabric, like uh if you wore it, this would be the public side, the side you would see. Um, and if you cut it vertically, it normally curls to the wrong side, so you actually will see the right side of your fabric. So, some, I'm just telling you that in case, you know, it's beneficial to know for whatever t-shirt you're cutting up. If you want to go ahead and promptly just forget that, it's really not that important unless you get like super into this and you really wanted to make sure that the yarn had some particular color in it that you liked, um, that was only on the outside or only on the inside of your shirt.

OK, so, I'm gonna go ahead and just eyeball this. This is a much thinner shirt. This is quite a bit thinner, so I'm gonna cut wider strips. To make my yarn. So, I'm just following this.

I don't care that it's kind of wiggling over to the side a little bit. And then we're gonna have to come back down here. And this part, like, usually I do this um on a table and I can walk to both sides of it, so I don't have to move it around like this. So I'm gonna cut it like this. And again, I'm gonna just kind of round off those corners.

We're going up and down and it really doesn't matter if you're perfectly on grain or anything like that. None of that really matters for this project. And we're gonna go back down. Towards the hem here. And I, I can also cut those little V's.

That And every little corner seems to help a little bit. I just forgot to do that before. All right. So with this shirt, because it's striped like that, I think that cutting it vertically like this. is a benefit because I kind of like having those little stripes in it.

And if I was cutting it horizontally, I mean, I would still get that color mixed in, but it would just be a slightly different effect, you know, cause if I was cutting them along the stripes. You know, you can't really control how that's going to curl up if you're gonna see a lot of the white or hardly any of the white or none of the white. All right. So, you know, really, when you cut up a shirt, you should only have like, little bit, little bits of this left over, in my opinion. Like, you should be able to get most of it.

Made into yarn. Just cutting those little notches. All right, so let's curl this. And so, oh, I left the hem here so we can see which way it wants to curl when I pull on it, see, it's going to curl and allow that right side to be on the outside. That's the right side of our project, but I'm just going to cut this off because I really don't want that extra bulk on there later, but that was helping me remember which side was the right side, which side is the wrong side.

So We have to be a little bit more gentle. When you pull on those little sections where, you know, zigzags. And sometimes your piece isn't gonna stay super curl just depending on how your fabric was knit up or the, you know, the. The, um, sometimes the fiber content might affect that a little bit, um, but as you crochet it or knit it, it's going to get kind of wadded up into a smaller, more compact piece anyway, so don't worry too much if it isn't like a perfectly smooth thing, it really doesn't matter. So in that way, when you cut it, you know, back and forth and just the switch back, you do end up with a lot of these little bits, you know, but when you crochet over them, you know, you can kind of get them to roll or go out of the way.

You're not gonna see a seam. It wouldn't be here, let me just sort of show you what it looks like when it's twisted. It's, it's makes it a lot, um, you know, you're, you, you are gonna see. Like some anomalies maybe. Actually, you know what, I should really just crochet a little bit of this part so you can see what it looks like.

Let me do that. I have a hook that's maybe not quite as big as I would want, but. It's close. So You know, here's one of those little switchbacks. It's got that extra stuff hanging off of it, but you can sort of twirl it around as you stitch with it.

And see when I'm pulling it through. You don't see any of those little seams. You might see some little bits sticking out like this though, you know, but they're not quite as bad as having that surged seam there. It's, and, and if you, if it really bothers you, it is the kind of thing that you could take the time to sort of twirl it around there, smooth it out as you stitch over it, you know, if, if, uh. Oh, I actually do have a little bit of a surge seam because it, it was, it's not a seam in the shirt, it was just like, I mean it was a seam in the shirt.

It was not a seam between two pieces. It was just something that ended up on the edge of my piece, but Anyway, You, you know, if that bothers you to see those little surged bits, I should really be using a larger hook for this, this yarn here. There we go. You know, and then when you work back into it. You can kind of tuck things away.

You can, you can kind of fiddle with things as you stitch into it, um, to get those little, like, I don't know, the little wingy dings that are sticking out, um, to behave themselves and to kind of go away. Sorry, I'm making this look a lot harder than it should be because I'm using a much smaller hook than this yarn should have a much larger hook here. But I just wanted you to look, see what it, what it would look like when you're crocheting over those little bits. See, so you can't eat, there's no surge seam. It looks really nice.

So that that method is really great, you know, if you really don't want to see those, those, um. Those little surge seams poking out. It makes it look a little smoother, a little nicer. Um, it does take more time though because you have to cut out your pieces separately. You know, the first one I just sliced across, connected those bits, and it like a huge long piece came together and it doesn't have all those little switchbacks in it.

It's just a big long spiral, so for most of it. Um, so that's why I normally prefer the first method, but you know, everybody has got different likes and dislikes, so I wanted to share both of those with you. Let me just check in here and make sure I answered everything here. The Stripology ruler is a large ruler that has slits every half inch. Look up GE designs, it's great for cutting.

Oh, this is a quilting, I, I have seen those. I just didn't know what they were called. OK, I know what you're talking about Twyla. I am not a quilter. My mother is big into quilting, and I'm sure she would probably like it if I would join her.

I'm kind of like quilting adjacent because I'm a sewer. I've been sewing ever since I was like 6, and every once in a while, I start thinking about quilting and then I'm like, oh, can I do another thing? But I think eventually it's gonna happen. Um, but thank you for that, Twyla. OK.

All right, that is it. That's all I have for you guys today, um, but like I said, if you wanna learn how to make this basket, and I will be teaching you how to connect your different colored balls together, um, that'll be in a couple of weeks from now. So please join me for that. I'd love to see you guys there. Thank you guys so much for being here today.

Bye everyone.