Crafty make: upcycling t-shirts into a scarf

I’ve had a couple of scarf pins on my Pinterest for a while now, but haven’t yet got round to making them.  Given I’ve also had a bit of a de-clutter from my drawers and have got rid of a few t-shirts which appear to have holes in (Gap t-shirts – not sure why these ones always seem to get holes after only a couple of wears – Tesco and M&S ones don’t! Very odd).  They’ve been sitting on the floor in the bedroom for a while, and the other day I had a bit of time so thought I’d finally get round to attempting one of the scarves I’d pinned.  Nothing like upcycling t-shirts that can’t be given away to charity shops.

As I’ve still not de-cluttered enough to find space for and buy a sewing machine, it was a non-sew one I wanted to try.  I love the plaited one I’d also pinned, but I don’t really want to hand sew t-shirt material so that’ll have to be tried at a later date.

I made two scarves, one in green, the other was using two purple t-shirts although you don’t see much of the second colour.  Maybe I’ll try alternating colours for another version.

Here’s how you make them:

1.       Lay your t-shirt out (I don’t do ironing, and for this it doesn’t need to particularly be ironed).  Chop from the bottom 1 inch strips, so you end up with massive circles of fabric.  If you’ve got a massive man size shirt you could do wider.

2.       I used about 13 circles (cut up to the arm holes), but use as many as you want and can get. It just means a longer scarf.

3.       Twist each circle so you’ve got one smaller circle made of 3 circles

4.       Cut the rest of the t-shirt (I used the sleeves) into small single strips – these will be used to tie the circles together.  Mine were about 3-4 inches long – you need to be able to tie them securely.

5.       Tie 2 of the mini circles together with one of the strips.  And repeat with all the circles, then tie the ends together to make one infinity scarf.  You can leave the ends open if you want but an infinity version does neaten it off a bit.

6.       Chop the ends off the tied strips.  I wanted mine as neat as possible, but you could leave the ties long for a different effect.

7.       Wear scarf doubled or even tripled up.

It’s not the neatest style of scarf, but it’s fun and is a great way of upcycling t-shirts that would need to be thrown out.

Thanks to Favecrafts for the original idea (love that website for ideas)

If you’ve made a similar scarf, or have other ways of upcycling t-shirts, do share a link in the comments…I’ve got lots more old t-shirts and vests that aren’t in a fit state for passing on, so could do with being used up.