Crafty cuts...

Over this week off before starting my new job, I've spent a bit of time indulging my inner child and getting crafty!

You might have seen the little postcard hangings I made for the house a few months ago, but recently I've noticed a few tutorials on the web for how to make infinity scarves (or circle scarves) out of old T-shirts. Since Tom had several bags full of old clothes that we were just going to recycle at the Cash for Clothes place, I decided to see if I could nab any with nice colours that could potentially be made into scarves or other items of clothing. Upcycling is the new recycling!

I followed a few different tutorials that I found on Pinterest, and after a few botched attempts using the wrong kind of shirt (turns out you really need 100% cotton T shirts or the strips won't roll up correctly) I managed to get two acceptable scarves in quite nice colours in next to no time. All you need is a cotton shirt, a pair of scissors, and a surface you can cut on, so there's absolutely no sewing involved!! Remember if they're second hand shirts you probably want to wash them first...

Here's a couple of links to some tutorials I found useful:

A Pretty Penny
Ette Studios
This Old Dress (slightly different style scarf)

And here's some pics of what I managed to make once I got the right material:

This one I made with two different shirts, one that was striped blue and cream, and one that was plain blue. One thing I learned was that when the cotton strips are stretched and roll back on themselves, they more often than not roll inside out so you only see the colour that is on the inside of the T-shirt. So in the case of my blue and cream striped T-shirt the strips came out quite muted (the colour was printed on the outside of the shirt , rather than being dyed all the way through). That's why I added strips from the darker blue T shirt. As I didn't have any T shirts without seams, I had to hide them under wrapping at both ends of the scarf, but if you manage to find a T shirt without seams then you can make more necklace-style scarves (like in the A Pretty Penny blog above).

Here's the finished product!

 

I also made another scarf out of a striped T shirt in two shades of grey. This was a larger shirt so it turned out longer than the blue scarf.

Again I had to wrap it on both ends to hide the seams. Because this shirt was striped in two shades of grey I thought it might be quite cool to try to cut the strips so they had both shades (rather than being one or the other), so that's why it looks like I've used two different coloured strips on the wrapping. 

One thing I found really helpful was hanging the strips across coat hooks to arrange the seams and then to wrap each set of seams in turn, as it keeps the strips from getting tangled. It was also helpful for stretching the cotton strips initially as it's easier to see if they're roughly the right length or not. Plus it's strangely fun hanging off a coat hook...

I also made a loose headband from some strips from the sleeves of the darker blue T shirt. Sorry for the poor quality images!

Really bad image, but it shows the mix of colours in the blue-white scarf quite nicely

Next time I might use strips to plait a headband so it's a bit more substantial. This one is probably just something I'd wear around the house, but you can quite easily make them more stylish to wear out in public!

You could also use the same sleeve strips to make a simple wristband:

 

That's all on crafty stuff for now, but I have some more cooking-based stuff to write up so I shall be back again very soon!

Bye for now xx