Upcycle Those Race Shirts!

How many races have you run?  If you are in the one to ten range, awesome!  I bet some of the shirts were pretty high quality and you wear them to train. A couple of them are the standard cotton, so you wear them as sleep or as whatever shirts.  I bet you have great memories of each, too!

If you are in the ten plus range, I bet you have asked yourself more than once, “what am I going to do with these t-shirts?” right before you toss them in the rag bin or the giveaway pile.  And here’s the thing…it’s not just races.  It’s the reunion, it’s the school event, it’s the company picnic.  There is a t-shirt for almost everything.  Don’t get me wrong.  They are great takeaways of a memorable event, but a person can only have so many t-shirts.

So what can you do?  Well, I’ve seen some pretty cool quilts made of old shirts and I admire the folks that can do that.  You can always retire the shirts to rags.  I mean, it seems silly to buy rags when you have all these extra t-shirts, right?  But, maybe you want to keep a little memory of the race you ran or event you took part in.  There has to be something you can do that isn’t too complicated and will allow you to use the shirts again, if not for wearing.

For those of us who aren’t quite quilters and have limited resources, I give you the woven rug.  It can be a bathroom rug, a doormat rug , or perhaps a next to the treadmill rug.  Either way, it is super easy to make. All it takes is about 6-8 medium t-shirts, a piece of cardboard (about 2′ x 3′) and some string.

Some of the shirts I for the project were perfect, but others were pretty loud, too colorful for where I wanted the rug to go.    So, I bleached the shirts and dyed them denim blue (Rit for under $3).  You have to do a bit of washing out after the bleach and again after the dye, but it worked out pretty well!

Make-shift loom made of cardboard and string.

Once your shirts are ready to go (and you may not need to do anything- sometimes the louder and more eclectic the better), you want to cut them into  24″ to 28″ long strips about an inch wide.  Don’t worry about collars or seems, they won’t really matter when you weave the strips through. But, do take off tags.  I felt for most shirts it was easiest to cut the strips vertically and use the sleeves for rags instead of for the rug.

Next up is to cut 1/2″ deep slits every inch or so into 2′ wide sides of your cardboard.  They don’t have to equally spaced.  It will have a neater look if you do and a more unique look if you don’t.  Then, with your string, you tie a loop around the first 1″ section to anchor the base of your weave.  Once it is tied in, pull the string to the other 2′ side of the cardboard and through the first slit, and back out again in the adjacent slit, and back to the other 2′ side of cardboard. Continue this until you get to your last slit, where you will tie a loop as you did a the beginning.    Your makeshift loom is complete!

First few strips of t-shirt through the weave. Please excuse the holes! My boys used this cardboard for bee-bee gun and bow and arrow practice:-/

For the weave, take one strip at a time and use an under, over pattern.  Under the first string, over the second, under the third, over the fourth, etc.  Then, with your next strip you would start by going over the first string and under the second and so on.  After every 4 or five strips, gently push the strips up to make the weave tighter.  If you want a thicker feel to the rug, you want the strips to be tightly packed together.  If you want a thinner feel, only push lightly. Depending on if you wanted a thick or thin rug, you may have some strips left over.

Once the weave is complete, you will need to tie the strips on the end to keep them from falling off.  Starting at one end, take two  adjacent ends and tie them together (do it twice for an extra secure weave). Repeat for the next two and so on.  Do this for both sides of the rug.

After the ends are tied, it is time to secure the ends of the strings.  Pull one of the loops of strings off and tie it to the first strip of t-shirt.  Repeat for the second loop.  Now you can pull the rug off of the cardboard.  Gently pull the string from the slits in the cardboard, one by one.

The last step is to clean up the strips of t-shirt so the parts after the knots are even.  Cut all strips to an even length (maybe an inch to two inches of the knot).

Tied ends of the t-shirt strips.

Upcycle complete! It’s unique and you made it!

I have always loved these type of things because they are so original.  No two rugs like these will ever be exactly the same.  Whenever I see mine, memories from different events are brought back.  How cool is that?

In case you are a much more visual person, I did see this video on weaving a rug that had a slightly different approach, but still pretty easy.

Happy Weaving!

Upcycle shirt rug!

Rug in its new home.