More t-shirt yaaaarnnn!

What a weeeek! For Clon's saaaake!

A productive one yet a little bit stressed.

Non handcrafted goals:

• Alien offspring basic survival needs: covered.
• Taking care of youngest ill alien-son (aka, Little Romulan): done.
• Provide alien offspring with help for their holidays homework: done.
• Various domestic tasks: done.
• Blog reorganisation: pending.

Knitting goal:

• Draw diagram for the "Thirteen " cowl and knit it: done.

Making t-shirt yarn goal:

Ah! The main subject of this post.

You cannot imagine how many tees and other non-cotton garments I've been accumulating over the last year. Three huge bags full of them, all for making T-shirt yarn and stripes for all kind of projects.

I've spent two full days and a half cutting stripes with scissors because I forgot to buy a new blade for my rotary cutter. My thumb looks like a purplish sausage and I'm afraid it will end up falling off my hand. Would be useful to have the capability of regeneration of a starfish (reminder: include this in my wish-list).

The t-shirt yarn mass production that almost cost me my thumb.

An aside before I continue telling you my weekly story that may be useful for some Earth Beings: when cutting the stripes you may want to show the right or the wrong side of the fabric. Once you decide which one to show have a look at your fabric. Mine’s got blue and white stripes on the right side and white on the wrong side and as you can see the fabric runs vertically. If I cut the stripe in the same direction as the fabric it will curl so that the right side shows. On the contrary, if I make my cut perpendicular to the direction of the fabric it will curl showing the wrong side. Keep this in mind even for your plain tees as you may want to show one side of the fabric or the other.

Back to track.

And you will ask why I'm in such a hurry as to put in danger my thumb's safety. Well, last year I made several workshops with Little Romulan and his classmates at school and this year I wasn't sure about it because I have little spare time, but just the day before the half-term holidays his teacher asked me about this year's workshops. Ups! I couldn't say no but I wanted to work out what and when asap.

After the last workshops I ended up with no t-shirt yarn at all, so I needed some material to try the three projects that I have chosen. All of them are easy and they can make them in 10-30 minutes.

• T-shirt yarn coasters with cardboard loom: tutorial from Creative Jewish Mom. Make the cardboard loom smaller and you will have tones of coasters in no time. Little Romulan has had loads of fun making them. If you'd like me to post pics and measurements of my loom for the coasters, just leave a comment below and I will do it asap.

• T-shirt yarn macrame puppets: the clever mind behind them is Pascale from Between the Lines. Sooo cute!
  The tutorial calls for wooden beads and cotton cord. I didn’t have but a ceramic bead similar in size and thin cotton yarn so I suppose it’s time for shopping!

• Josephine's knot bracelet: video-tutorial presented by This Old Dress. The knot can be tricky but once you get the hang of it, you'll make a bracelet in no time. Instead of glueing together the stripes with a piece of fabric, I’ve made a couple of slipknots. If you have a fish memory- like me- and forget how to make the knot you can watch the video again or go to this page where you can follow step-by-step instructions.

Another thing that I would like to say is that I haven't  found but a few T-shirt yarn projects for children: easy, quick and no potentially dangerous tools ( i.e., a glue gun) nor sewing or other "difficult" techniques involved.

Here you have a couple more:

• T-shirt headband : de Love Stitched. Maybe fabric glue instead of using a glue gun...
• T-shirt rug: using a hula-hoop as a loom, here. ( This is one of my old bookmarked projects).

If you have any suggestions, any link to more T-shirt yarn tutorials for children or even a tutorial of your own, please leave a comment below. I will be eternally thankful.

That's all for today which is no small thing.

Catch you next weekend!