Scrap Rug

This is my first true scrap project. When putting away my regular clothes and pulling out my pregnancy clothes, I realized that I had a large collection of t-shirts with small holes in them. For several years, I had been shoving old t-shirts to the back of my drawer. Once I added a few of my husband Adam's old, beat up undershirts, I had quite an impressive collection. I went online and started looking for project ideas.

In the end I decided on making a crocheted rag rug, using directions found on Crazy Mom Quilts. Our bath mats are pretty old and worn. For awhile my husband has been talking about wanting a new one, but it seems such a silly thing to spend money on. The old ones mght be worn looking, but they are still doing their job of absorbing water from my feet when I get out of the tub, right? So this project seemed perfect. I reclaimed space in my drawers without throwing out those t-shirts, I had a project to work on, and we got a new bath mat.

I cut the bodies of the shirts into half inch loops and threw them all into a pillowcase. The planner in me thought about working out a pattern, but in the end I decided that I was over planning this one. So I mixed up all the diffent loops in the bag, and just pulled them out randomly. It has been a great project for picking up at odd moments. Chores are done, and Alessia is still napping. Alessia is in bed for the night, and I feel like sitting for a few moments with something relatively mindless to do with my hands. Those sorts of odd moments. Once all the loops were used up, I wrapped the ends in white to reinforce them and add a bit of a finished look, sewed down the ends at the beginning and the end, and threw it in the washer.

I'm so happy with how it came out. Now I have a pile of sleeves from all those t-shirts. I think I'm going to do a little looking around for a project.