After cleaning out my wardrobe, I was left with several tops I thought were too tatty to donate to the local charity shop. My mum tends to recycle such clothes by making cleaning cloths out of them, but since I'm not such a fan of the noble art of cleaning, I found an alternative use on Pintrest: t-shirt yarn. I quickly realized that it's probably much easier to make t-shirt yarn out of X-large men's t-shirts without seams than fitted small women's tops of various fabrics! But it does work, and in case you want to try it out yourself, here's one possible way to go about it.
To make the 'yarn', cut the fabric into strips. I used a width between 1-2 inches depending on the thickness of the fabric (thinner fabrics were cut into wider strips). This worked quite well with a crochet hook of 20 mm, but for smaller hooks you may want to experiment with smaller strips. I used different types of fabric, most of which didn't allow me to stretch the fabric to create tubular yarn, which is a common step in online tutorials (e.g.
http://www.craftpassion.com/2009/05/recycle-tutorial-making-of-t-shirt-yarn.html/2). But no fear, it also works with strips, although the end result looks maybe a bit more ragged. Think of this as a feature, rather than a shortcoming :-) Finally, to join the strips of fabric into one continuous ball of 'yarn', I used the slit and slip method from
this tutorial.
I started with a magic circle of 6 double crochet (dc, UK) / single crochet (US) stitches. There are loads of tutorials about the magic circle/loop out there in case you've never done it (e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLUaywX0-WE). For the next row, I increased by making 2 dc stitches into each dc stitch in the ring (ending up with 12 stitches). At this point, a stitch marker comes in handy to start tracking the rows (I used my trusty paperclip).
For the next rows, keep increasing till you're happy with the size of the circle; this will be the bottom of your basket. My method for increasing was to add increases (2 dc into 1 stitch,) in every second stitch for the next row (dc 2dc dc 2dc ...), in every third stitch for the row after that (dc dc 2dc dc dc 2dc ...), in every fourth stitch in the row after that (dc dc dc 2dc dc dc dc 2dc ...), etc.
When you're finished with the bottom of the basket, just continue with rows of dc, one dc in every stitch from the last round. This will form the 'walls' of the basket. Continue adding rows till you're happy with the height of the basket.
To finish off, use a slip stitch and then weave in the ends. I quite like the slightly unfinished, ragged look of these baskets, with some pieces of fabric sticking out occasionally (I wasn't very precise in cutting my strips and the fabric didn't curl up to form neat proper 't-shirt yarn'). Mixing colours & fabrics also adds more character, in my opinion. In addition to looking nice, they are sturdy and quick to crochet. The bigger basket in the picture below has a diameter around 20 cm and can easily be finished in one evening, though you may want to allow extra time to cut up your fabric if it comes from a lot of small tops rather than larger pieces of fabric.
My mum has already put in an order for one of these. Even she can't deny it's much more fun than cleaning cloths...
