Being in a sorority and working on college campuses for ten years, you start to acquire a large amount of t-shirts. For some reason I let them stack up. A few months ago, I went through the stacks of t-shirts and found some to give away, some I wanted to sleep in or “grunge” in, and others that I put into other stacks for projects. (Yes, more stacks!)
After pondering what type of projects I could do with old t-shirts, I made the decision to start a project…keeping in mind there would be an 11-year-old who would want to take part in the activity.
Here’s the first Upcycled Shirt Project we accomplished:
Dog Toys & More!
Little Miss Leopard Lair started the project by selecting a few shirts in different colors. We then took the scissors and made cuts along the side of the shirts. (see image below).
The next step was probably the most fun…pulling at the cuts to tear the shirts into strips! This caused a great deal of laughter and some Incredible Hulk Muscle Flexing moments!
The edges of the strips start to curl in making them look like tubes. That’s ok. Select about 5 or 6 strands of 3 colors of shirts and place them into 3 separate piles. Make sure they are not tangled and they are all about the same length.
Using a shorter piece of shredded shirt, tie the 3 bunches together at one end. (making it all look like a funny pony tail!). Then start braiding the colors until you get to the end. Leave a little bit at the end so you can use one more shorter piece of shredded shirt to tie it together.
Your finished product should look something like these. She had so much fun that she made them in all different sizes to give to all the pets in the family. Little Miss Leopard Lair even talked about sharing the idea with Student Council as a fundraiser idea that will be 100% profit for the group as there wouldn’t be a cost if all the members donated a few shirts each!
Once she got the hang of it, she started to whip out quite a few in no time! Then she got really creative and made a bracelet. For this she did it the same way but cut the shirt strands in half (or used the sleeves from the shirts torn the same way). Below is a photo of the Dog Toy she made for her new puppy and her matching bracelet:
This was a fun and easy project to do. Little Miss Leopard Lair has asked to make more of them during Spring Break. Fortunately there are plenty more t-shirts in the craft project pile for her to use!
Have fun making use of your stacks of t-shirts!
(This project & blog post is approved by the Nik-Dog!)
Stories from the Leopard Lair 