Have An Old T-Shirt? Want A New Necklace? I've got you covered!

So, last night at got home around 5ish, as per usual. The Hubbums had one of his classes after school, so he wasn't due home for a bit and I was itching to make something, but I knew he wouldn't be too late, so I didn't want to get into something time/mess intensive because we would have to do the dinner thing and run a few errands and such.

Enter, stage left: Old T-Shirt.

Also Enter, stage right, of course: Really cute necklace idea that I've seen and have been dying to try.

Curtain.


Our story begins by placing the old t-shirt on a cutting mat. You may not want to use your Basic Grey mat, as I sort of chewed mine up with this project, but it is still fine, really, so that is totally up to you.
Once your t-shirt is placed diagonally across the mat so that it is mostly on said mat, use a rotary cutter to cut strips about 3/4 of an inch to an inch or so beginning at the bottom of the shirt...you DO know that I didn't measure a single one of them, right? 'Cause...yeah. I totally don't measure stuff. I just don't do it. Just ay'n. It's really just fine if they aren't exactly the same or even if they aren't perfect. Just try to do a decent job, huh? HA! Just make sure you are cutting through both layers so you have loops.


Once you have several strips cut (I think I cut around a dozen or so, but I only used seven for this particular project.), you need to stretch each one end to end. This will cause them to roll up a bit and look really quite neat, if I do say so myself!!!


Next, you want to gather those strips together and decide how many you want. Basically, you are now deciding the girth of your necklace. If you want more of a 'scarf' you can use tons and tons, but I wanted a necklace, so I used about half a dozen. Be sure to keep at least one strip aside for accent work.


Cut the strip that you set aside into smaller strips (these, obviously won't be loops like the big ones). Stretch one of those strips and wrap it around the cluster and tie it together. This will hold your necklace together. Tuck the tails under the wrap to give it a nice clean look.


Once you have it bound you can, if you choose, leave it plain like that. Or...if you would like to add a bit of texture and visual interest you can tie small pieces around the strands in various places around the piece. In this photo I show the piece tied around a single strand, which works, however, I decided to change it after I took this shot and I actually bound three strands with each knot, but I randomly chose the strands so that it wasn't the same three or just two 'chunks' so to speak. You can play with it and see what you want to do with it. Also, you can TOTALLY add cute handmade fabric flowers or other embellishments to this necklace! I plan to use them interchangeably with it from time to time.



And you have a fabulous statement style piece made in less than an hour! I love it!!! If you make one please post it and let me know so I can see your handiwork!


And the curtain closes. Take a bow!