T-Shirt Rug

I made the girls a rug to go in their playhouse. It only took about 30 T-shirts from the local Goodwill, a rug canvas from JoAnn's, some double fold quilt binding, and a whole lot of time. I started this thing months ago and worked on it in phases, mostly when I had catching up to do on my favorite TV shows.

Although time consuming, it is very easy to make. First, gather your supplies. It took about 30 shirts to make this rug that is approximately 2 feet wide by 3 feet long.

Then cut your rug canvas to the size you want. This is what it looks like. all folded up right out of the package.

Next, use a rotary cutter and mat to cut the t-shirts into strips that are about 1 inch wide by 5 inches long. Some of mine were only 4 inches and others were up to 6 inches. Precision is so NOT necessary.

Once you’ve got all your shirts cut into strips, you can start tying them into the grid. I used 1 strip for every four holes and tied them diagonally across. Each marked (in blue) square on the grid has 100 holes so I used 25 strips per square. It took me about an hour to do 6 squares once I got the hang of it. I think I had about 115 or so squares to fill so it was a lot of hours of tying.

Here is a view of the back after tying on all the strips.

The last step was putting the binding on the raw edges to the grid doesn’t come unraveled. I just used the pre-packaged double fold quilt binding from the fabric store.

Although it was much less time consuming that the actual tying, it was tricky sewing on the binding while trying to keep all the t-shirt fringes out of the way.

The stitches are far from strait or pretty, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t even see the biding. It is hidden by all the fringe. It just needs to be there or the edges of the grid that you cut will come undone and that would be sad after all those hours of tying.

Here is the finished product.

The girls were happy to finally have the rug they have been watching grow for the last several months and I am happy to get started on my next big project.