My Pinterest Obsession

Like thousands of people I have become obsessed with Pinterest. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I have been motivated to bake more and craft more and even ponder the thoughts and quotes of others more.  I have Christmas presents figured out and I have done some home improvements and a little re-purposing of old things turned into new things. All because of my little obsession with Pinterest.

When I saw this on Pinterest I knew I had to make one.

These are so easy to make and really a lot of fun. I even enlisted the help of my son. The tutorial for the flower can be found here.  Her instructions were very easy to follow. I used hot glue for my flower and it was done and ready to wear in ten minutes.  So here is what you need to do to make a lovely t-shirt scarf/necklace…

First you need to cut up an old shirt. I used a men’s large size.  Start by cutting off and discarding the hem. Then cut 1 inch strips as far up the shirt as you can. My shirt had a picture on the front so I couldn’t go all the way to the arm pits. The more strips you have the fuller scarf you will end up with.

Then you need to stretch your strips by pulling them on each end. They will roll up into themselves and turn into almost a tube. 

When you get bored with doing this you can find a helper.  

After you have all your strips stretched you should have a pile of t-shirt “yarn” that is like this.  You can see in the picture that you create a lot of lint when you stretch out the knit strips. I soaked my stretched out strips in water and then threw them in the dryer to help get rid of some of the lint since I knew I would be wearing this on a black shirt.The yellow scarf shows all the t-shirt tubes the same length. I didn’t want that look so I cut mine into different lengths. This was a little more work but I was pleased with the final look of it. It did mean I had to stitch all my tubes back together and the easiest way to do that is to cut a little piece of your t-shirt into roughly a 1 x 2″ piece. Gather all the loose ends on one side of the scarf and fold the piece of t-shirt over them and stitch. Gather the other ends of the tubes and tuck them into the other side of the t-shirt piece and sew them in. I folded over all the edges of my piece of t-shirt as I stitched so I wouldn’t have any unfinished edges.  Sorry I didn’t take a photo of this step.  I then made my flower using three t-shirts of different shades of gray. I put a pin on the back of my flower so I can attach it to a head band or wear it on a sweater. One flower, many possibilities.

I am very pleased with the end result. I got a lot of compliments on it.