Monday, March 12, 2012

T-Shirt Necklace / Scarf

This was literally the easiest craft ever, so I feel capable to write a tutorial that won’t make someone end up with a total hot mess of a project.

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Start with an old t-shirt.  Mine was one of my husband’s and it was a soft, gray cotton.  I don’t think the size of the shirt matters, obviously a bigger shirt is going to make something you can loop twice and it’ll still be loose versus a smaller shirt will be closer to your neck – or just looped once if you did a child’s shirt.  I did a solid color, but I think it’d be fun to do this with a print or a stripe.

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Big ol junky t-shirt.

Start by making incisions along the one side about a 1/4” wide.  Stop when you get to the armpit.

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Cut all the way across the shirt – don’t stress about straight lines.  Once you’ve got a bunch of loops, start by just stretching them out a little bit between your hands and you’ll notice they sort of coil up on each other.  I didn’t take a picture of this step because it did require two hands… sorry!  Set one loop aside.

Once you’ve got a bunch of coiled up loops, start lining up the seams in one of your hands – it’s okay if the seams on the other side don’t line up perfectly – you’re going to coil the necklace anyways and it’s meant to look a little imperfect.  (Thus, why this is a great craft for me!)

Once you line them up, take your set aside loop and start wrapping it around the seams in  your hand.  I read a few tutorials that said they used a fabric glue to hold it – I just tied a small knot in the end and tucked the loose ends under.  This is what it looked like:

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As I said, this makes a really long necklace or scarf (whatever you want to call this) – I didn’t like the way it looked hanging all the way down. That could just be my preference though….

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I recommend making a somewhat constipated look when you take self-portraits.  It really helps you feel like less of a goober than you already do in these situations.

So anyways, I prefer to wear mine double looped – it always helps to hide the fact that the ends aren’t totally even.

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And there you go!  T-shirt scarf.  Or necklace.  Whatever.  T-shirt thingey!