We want to acknowledge Monica Resinger who provided us with this fantastic crochet idea.
This is a good activity to do after women in the program have developed some skills with crocheting. It doesn’t take a lot of skill and after learning or re-learning how to crochet, many women want to make something useful and beautiful. The information on the skills needed to do this project can all be found in any basic crochet instruction book. There are several available through public libraries. This project solves the problem of having the right resources. There seems to always be t-shirts in the “give away” pile.
We have found a great way to recycle t-shirts; we make crocheted rag rugs with them! The finished rugs are beautiful and durable and are great to use or give away as gifts.
When looking for the right material, weed through clothes and set aside t-shirts. When cut into strips, they are great because they don’t fray.
Cut the t-shirt into one long, approximately 1/2 inch wide strip. The way to do this with t-shirts is to begin at the bottom, cut into the shirt about 1/2 inch then cut around and around the shirt stopping around the arm and discarding the rest. The strip doesn’t have to be a perfect 1/2 inch; if it is a little off here and there, it won’t harm the finished rug. After you cut the strips, wind them into a ball (like a ball of yarn). It is important to keep the material in one long strip rather than making a lot of short strips to prevent as much joining of strips as possible. Joining strips will make the rug a little thicker in those spots, so you don’t want to join too much. You will need a few t-shirts for one fairly large crochet rug. Cutting the strips is actually the most work of the project; once this is done, the crochet works up quickly because you are working with big stitches.