Shirts Upcycling

There are so many different ways to upcycle shirts. Here's a selection of ideas and inspiration.

Refashioning shirts to other clothing items

Men's shirts to Womens Pants from Eco Fashion Sewing

A dress by Simply Homemade:

Another dress by Second Chances by Susan:

A waistcoat from a men's leather shirt by Stuff-for-it-yourself:

A skirt from a pretty empire waist shirt by Creatively Content:

Boys shorts from a shirt by Sew With Aloha:

and A girls skirt by Threading My Way:

I love that even a plain shirt can be made into something pretty!

 Old shirts to non-clothing items.

Bags

Men's shirt to handbag

A purslet from a boys shirty by Me Sew Crafty:

Cuff pouches I made:

Pillows

By My Great Finds:

By Threading my Way

Aprons

By Made with my two hands:

My own frilly apron:

And....just when you thought you'd seen it all...

A Peg Bag from a men's shirt by Threading my Way

To see more ideas for upcycling shirts you can see my 

Pinterest Board - Shirts Upcycling

And for over 600 ideas for upcycling all items of clothing - head on over to the ongoing

Clothes Upcycling Linky

There are so many ideas and lots of inspiration there. Feel free to add your own clothes upcycling projects too!

Happy Upcycling

T-shirt upcycle. Weaving - a bowl?

A while ago, I found a tutorial for weaving a rug from strips of t-shirt yarn.  

As I was sorting through my large pile of clothes to be upcycled, I found a lot of t-shirts and thought I'd give the weaving a go!.

So here's the pile of t-shirts, and one of my daughter's hula hoops:

I cut strips from a white t-shirt to loop around the hoop for starters.

Then I cut some continuous strips from other t-shirts, by cutting around the main part of the t-shirt in a spiral. 

And off I went..

To join strips of yarn together end to end, I tried one method first, but came up with a problem when I wanted to attach the beginning of a whole ball of yard and couldn't fit the ball through the hole!

So I took to just tying it with a reef knot - nice and simple. The weaving wasn't perfect fabric and perfectly smooth (at all) so I wasn't worried about a few small knots here and there.

My youngest daughter wanted to have a go when she came home from school. And she wove as fast as I could cut and roll balls of yarn!

As we wove on, we found that we'd probably pulled the yarn a bit too tight initially and the rug we had intended to make wasn't very flat!

So we decided to stop, cut and tie the ends (again just using reef knots) and then trim the ends.

And here is what we ended up with..

It's quite a sturdy bowl, perfect for holding more t-shirt yarn balls!

Or even a fruit bowl!

We are going to try this again, and try to keep the tension a bit looser to see if we can make a rug with the remaining yarn!

Have you ever tried making things with t-shirt yarn?

I'll make sure and post photos of our next attempt at a woven t-shirt rug. Hopefully the next one will turn out flat!

Finger Knitting

My daughter and I are continuing to explore working with wool. We've done lots of crochet practice and experiments, and also tried French Knitting.

Next to try was some finger knitting!

I watched a Youtube video to see how it was done and then showed my daughter who took to it straight away!

She chose to just use 2 fingers as that was easier than 4 which I had showed her with; and with some funky thick wool she just sat back and knitted, and knitted, and knitted..

Until her wool ran out!

The resulting 10 meter rope was played with for hours after that!!!

I can see lots of fun to be had with this finger knitting. I've seen these types of long 'ropes' then used to make chunky blankets!

I'll have to investigate this further!!

Have you tried finger knitting?

Any suggestions for projects to try?

It's great fun - if you haven't yet you should give it a go!

Skirt to Bag Upcycle - A Tutorial

I've made bag from one of my daughter's old skirts before and it turned out really well:

So when I was sorting through a new pile of clothes to upcycle and found another skirt I knew it would make a pretty bag - and thought I'd make a tutorial to show how easy it is to prolong the life of an old favourite skirt by making it into a pretty and useful bag!

So here's how:

First take your skirt (this one was lined)

Cut a strip around 10cm (4") wide from the bottom of the skirt. This is what you'll use for the straps.

Main bag part

Next you need to stitch the outside base of your bag.

Turn your skirt inside out and fan the skirt right out:

Unless you want your bag to be like a big semi-circle, you'll need to fold the skirt in before pinning and stitching.

I just folded the edges in on either side like this:

But you could get creative here and do pleats all around - or just in the front, or fold and pin however you choose to make your bag your style!

Pin and stitch across the base of the skirt, which will form the base of your bag:

Turn your bag right sides out.

Now if your skirt is lined, you need to stitch across the bottom of this.

First lay it out of the bag like this, and trim if necessary:

Then fold the raw edges of the lining inside on themselves and pin closed:

 Push the lining inside the skirt and your main bag part is finished!

Straps

Take the strip you cut from the bottom of your skirt at the start, and place above your bag where you want the straps to be. Cut 2 strips the length you desire:

For each strap, fold the short end over, then the longer sides to the middle, then fold all in half lengthways and stitch along all 4 edges:

So now you should have 2 finished straps:

Attach straps to main bag

Now all you need to do is place the straps where you want them on your bag and pin into place:

Sew each strap to the bag, using a rectangle with a cross through the middle for extra strength:

Now your bag is finished!

For the free downloadable PDF version of this tutorial, click here.

And for more ideas on upcycling skirts you can follow my 

Skirt Upcycling Pinterest Board.

And for over 600 ideas for upcycling all different types of clothes - take a look at the clothes upcycling linky page here.

Happy Upcycling