Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Crocheting With Fabric

Have you ever heard of fabric crocheting? I've heard about it from one of my bloggy friends here in blogland. You can find her blog in my sidebar where my followers are. I've never heard of it until Pat mentioned it.
I've heard of crocheting with plastic bags that you get from the the grocery market but never with fabric.
You can use cut up t-shirts like my friend Pat did. She made some rugs and a table runner. I looked it up on the Internet and it said that you could also use sheets and pillowcases. You can even rip the sheets in strips as you go. But of course your end result will have a more shaggy appearance. I like how you can just rip the sheets. It would go much faster then having to cut old t-shirts into strips, is what I'm doing right now. See the picture below.
No, this isn't a pile of dirty laundry. This is a pile of old t-shirts that I'm going to cut up. This is some of my son's old t-shirts. My hubby has a lot he said that he could give to me to cut up. Also in the picture above, can you see the two balls of fabric that I have already cut? I'm so excited. I just love new projects. I've also come to find out that it is very messy cutting up the t-shirts inside the house. So I've been sitting on my swing outside and I've just been cutting away.
You do need very sharp scissors to do this. And of course do this with caution so you don't cut yourself. It does take time. It doesn't go very fast. So my goal is to cut up a lot of t-shirt strips outside before the weather gets cold. Then I'll start on my project. I'm not sure what I want to make as of yet. I was thinking a rug or some seat-mats for my swing outside. I don't know if they will be done this summer because it's already at the end of the summer. But it would be a great idea. Because my wooden swing outside is so uncomfortable but beautiful and I just love to spend time out there on my swing. Also because I haven't done this before, I don't know if I would have enough cut up t-shirts for a project like that. That the thing with this project. How far will one ball of fabric take you. Maybe someone out there can tell us.
The way I cut the the t-shirts up to get the maximum usage of the old t-shirt is to start at the bottom of the hem. Cut into it on an angle. And just keep circling around until you get up to the arm pit part. I don't think you can do much more then that but maybe there's someone out there who can give me a hint on how to cut up the whole shirt. I have been cutting up the sleeves and saving them for maybe smaller projects.
The Internet said to use a big plastic crochet needle for the job of single or double crocheting. And when you need to add on another ball of fabric, you join the ends by knotting them together.
Well there you have it. My next crochet project. I will show you periodically what it looks like and what I decided to make in the up coming posts. And if I am having to much of a hard time with it and threw it to the back of the closet, then I'll let you know, either way. But maybe it's an idea that will work for you. I've never used fabric before so this is all new to me. But I'm looking forward to it.
So is there anyone out there who crochets with fabric?