Tuesday, August 16, 2011

A Tisket, A Tasket, A T-Shirt Basket or Market Bag


On the yarn crawl a couple of weeks back we fell in love with this upcycled t-shirt yarn we bought at BAH! Yarns in Washington.  Natalie and I thought we would both do a knit along with the yarn.  Well, that didn't happen. Natalie is deep in knitting vintage acrylic yarn into "tushie cushies" for her dogs.  I wanted a quick knit so I decided to make mine.  I followed the pattern and was surprised to find that three spools was not enough to finish the pattern.  I modified the pattern, and though I liked the basket, it wasn't quite what I had in mind.  I swiped Natalie's spools and tired again.  I made a smaller basket/bag which I liked much better.  I gave Natalie the first try basket and kept the second round market bag for me. 

I really do love the idea of making yarn out of old t-shirts, I googled "t-shirt yarn"  and found several links as to how to make your own yarn.  I liked this one ( http://www.craftpassion.com/2009/05/recycle-tutorial-making-of-t-shirt-yarn.html ).  I think this yarn would make great bags and rugs.  The yarn is a little hard to knit with, I would use slick needles.  I also found dpns to be really impossible to use with this particular pattern.  Circular needles are the way to go.  So to the t-shirts in my my wardrobe I say beware of an upcycle.








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