Thoughts on a T-shirt Rag Rug

This came together wonderfully quickly!  I stupidly forgot to note how many t-shirts I used -- at least six, I suspect.  This rug weighs 2.5 lbs. -- not quite 1.2 kilos!  It's single crochet (UK double) on a row of foundation single crochet, using an 11.5mm hook, the largest I could find at the time.  (I have to admit that I have tried and tried the FSC, using a number of different tutorials, and am still not sure I'm doing it right.  But this attempt looked tidy and consistent, so I went with it!)

I was actually pretty careful to keep the edges as straight as possible, both by counting the number of stitches on a regular basis, and by sometimes working the last stitch into the side instead of the top (sshhh!), which pulled things in rather nicely -- but the weight of the different shirts really made a big difference in the thickness of the various rows.  It was also certainly a factor -- but this I expected -- that in cutting the shirts I found the picking-out of hems so laborious that after the first two or three shirts I didn't bother, and just cut the first strip a bit narrower to allow for the bulkiness of the hem.  These lengths of the yarn didn't curl up in the same manner as the others, of course, so along with the stitching made those rows behave differently.

This is actually Version 2, as I misjudged my gauge on Version 1 and ended up with a piece that was a bit taller than I really wanted, and so I reworked it starting from the Version 1 end, ripping it out as I went and re-crocheting it in the other direction, a few stitches smaller.  This took far less time than the first, because of course I had already connected the various pieces!  I did take the opportunity to rearrange a grey-heavy stretch at the end of Version 1 -- it is still, but more balanced than it had been!

I simply knotted the pieces of yarn at first, but this of course leaves a big lump in the fabric -- it doesn't show as much as you'd think, but you can certainly feel it under your feet.  Most of the joins in mine are the larks'-head version explained in method 3 at Dollar Store Crafts' tutorial.  When I decided that for the remake I wanted to rearrange some of the colors, I couldn't just pick apart these joins, so I had to cut them apart and reattach, and I just sewed those by hand with some thread and back-stitching.  I don't quite agree with DSC that the larks'-head is the least visible join, as the knot though small does make a lump in the fabric -- less than a square knot does, certainly, but still a lump -- and I found the stitched joins to be not only the least visible, but the easiest to work with, as there is less bulk to have to pull through the various loops of the crochet. 

It does make a satisfyingly solid fabric, with, amusingly, here and there just a small reminder of its former life --

So the conclusions seem to be that the economical way of cutting the t-shirts, which will give you one considerable length of fairly-smooth yarn and a number of smaller lengths that zig-zag, with lots of pointy bits sticking out, doesn't look as sloppy as you'd think (!) once it's worked up.  I thought that I would end up having to trim off a lot of the more rustic bits, but most of them slipped pretty easily under the next row of stitches (or were pushed!).  It doesn't look as smooth as the purchased "t-shirt yarn" -- and I have to put that in "scare quotes" because, really, I can hardly believe that you can buy this stuff ready-made instead of doing it yourself, where's the frugality and eco-friendliness in that?? -- but although a number of the sticking-out bits will probably pop out in the first wash, it doesn't look sloppy, either.

And this was only about a third of the stash of old t-shirts I've accumulated.  So I'm planning another rug, and since there are a lot of plain or mostly-plain white shirts and I still have a stash of powdered dye left from tie-dying at day camp some years ago -- waste not, want not! --

Comments

[Mary Lou Egan]

I love it. Was it hard on your hands?

[Jeanne]

Mary Lou -- The first time around, it was, but the second was easier, I’m not sure why other than that I got used to it. I did notice quite early on that although I usually hold the hook like a pencil, I switched without even being aware of it to holding the hook overhand, and didn’t bother (or couldn’t, more like) hold the yarn wrapped around my little finger as for knitting. I still ended up with a raw-ish spot on the outside of my hook-hand palm, where the butt of the hook rested – from pushing the hook into the fabric.

[Toffeeapple]

That looks good but I know that if I had one I would trip over it almost as soon as I put it down. I can trip on my wood floors very easily...