I’ve been seeing all sorts of posts on pinterest about making t-shirt yarn (also known as “tarn”).  I’m always up for new yarn, and I wanted to see how this worked.

What I wanted to learn was how to make a continuous length of yarn from a t-shirt. There are numerous tutorials that describe how to do this. I looked at a few including this one:  Making t-shirt yarn.

I went through our t-shirts and found about six that were getting pretty ragged.  David said, “you are going to do what?  This is another project?  Don’t you have some other projects you are working on?”  But then he helped me find some t-shirts as he also loves to clear out stuff.  He is the opposite of hoarder.  I watched the video, followed the instructions, and cut up my t-shirts. It was really an easy process.

Here’s the result.  Most of the t-shirts are pretty neutral in color since they came from David’s closet.  I added the red one for some variety.

Cutting the t-shirts up and making the yarn was interesting, but a little tedious and not my favorite activity in the world.  However, it was worth it (and worth it to do again) because I had so much fun crocheting with it.  I used a big ole 15 mm crochet hook.

There are lots of patterns out there.  I am using this one: Free Rug Crochet Pattern.  It’s great fun, but next time I will try this one from Purl Bee.  It’s just written a little more simply, and I think the results would be similar.

Unfortunately, I am out of t-shirts and have an unfinished rug.  I may check out some yard sales and pick up some more.  So far I have this little rug.  I can stand on it – it’s about 16 inches wide.

It’s going to be the gradual build rug.  I don’t want it to be huge, but it needs a little more work.

I really like it although I kinda wish the center color wasn’t so big.  I wasn’t sure how much of each tarn I had, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to look crocheted.  It’s an experiment, and a very fun one.