Craft Night–T-Shirt Scarves!

This week several friends came over for a night of crafting and tortilla soup. You can read more about why we chose to whip up t-shirt scarves here.

The craft night verdict: T-shirt scarves might be one of the most rewarding, least time-consuming projects in the history of hot glue (which these require none, btw. They require t-shirts and scissors. That’s it. Oh, and a neck to hang the scarf around.)

Here’s April giving her best model ‘tude. (I say you’re allowed to do that when you make your own clothes and you look as “I-own-this-place” as she does.) Do you like how my yellow scarf matches the shirt I’m wearing? Naturally, it made me want to curtsey.

Here’s how it went down:

Everyone brought over the shirts they would have given to Goodwill anyhow. We dumped them out onto the table and started chopping.

We figured out that cotton t-shirts without any added lycra to make them stretchy worked the best. The shirts that had a bit of give to begin with didn’t quite curl up in an ideal way when they were stretched (instead they just just maintained their shape no matter how we pulled on them. I guess that’s sort of the point of lycra in the first place.)

Speaking of stretching, after we chopped up the shirts, we got creative about how we shaped the cotton. Emily had a pretty good t-shirt yoga technique going.

After the strips of t-shirts were curling to our exacting standards, we looped, braided, twisted and tied them into scarve.

Don’t Ashely and Colleen’s necks look happy?

I think these t-shirt scarves are the PERFECT project for a group. Wouldn’t it be fun to close the conference room door and do them over a lunch break at work? Or on a Saturday afternoon before you go out that night? Maybe for a crafty birthday party or bridal shower?

Today I’m looking at every t-shirt differently. I was just scoping out Mike’s t-shirt drawer to see if there were any colors that might be my style. He’s constantly complaining that t-shirts he buys shrink and become weirdly proportioned after several washes. I’m starting to think that might not be such a bad thing!

Tomorrow I’ll post a detailed tutorial on how to whip up one of these t-shirt scarves in no time flat.

UPDATE: Here’s the t-shirt scarf tutorial!