Upcycled T-shirt Yarn Class

I am taking Stefanie Japel's online class for recycling old t-shirts into yarn. Well, I guess it's really any t-shirt, not necessarily old. I am really enjoying the techniques we are learning. Basically, you chop up a cotton tee into a spiral (she shows us a really quick method for doing this) and pull the strip of cotton and it curls into a tube. I made and dyed my first batch of yarn this weekend.

This is what I am starting with. A pile of my husband's old undershirts. I had been collecting them for dust cloths, and really don't need 57 dust cloths.


They have a future as beautiful cotton yarn. Well, the torso from the armpit down of each of these does, at least.

I used one of those teenybopper tie dye kits. The color stays bright and you just add water.



I had a couple of hanks already cut into yarn.




I also had some shirt torsos and dyed those. They will be cut into yarn after dyeing.

Yarn burritos!

The finished product (some of it):

First time dyeing yarn, I'm pretty happy with it. I am learning a lot about dyeing plant fiber versus animal fiber (like wool). You can't dye cotton with things you would dye wool with, like Kool-Aid, acid dyes, or cake dye. I watered the dye down in cups and applied it with foam brushes, as I wanted a muted color. I might overdye some of this with tea to see how that mutes it even more. Hopefully I will have some FOs from this yarn to show soon!