How to Stretch a Shirt - Project 5 (for YOU!)

You may think that at this point, I was all out of shirt.  Ha!  No way, jose!  I’ve got all of THIS left:

(Plus a few scraps I had inadvertently thrown away that I had to dig through the trash can for...)

PLENTY of fabric for some cool stuff, don’t you think?

Well, long ago (meaning like 2 months or so) I was perusing blogland and came across this post for upcycled t-shirt bangles on LBB.  And I thought: hm.  Easy.

And we know how much I LOVE easy.

I put it on the back burner.  I didn’t have any knit scraps.

Wait, knit scraps.  I have knit scraps!!!  Now that I’ve made 4 projects out of one shirt, all I have are knit scraps!!

So, if you want to see some pretty ones and the original inspiration, go to LBB.

And here's my version - Scrappy Bracelets.

You will need:

knit scraps (or the remnants of your thrifted shirt)

needle and thread or a sewing machine

safety pin

Here are the scraps of knit I used - most from the thrifted shirt, but I did cheat a tiny bit and added some other scraps I happened to find.  I used the longest scrap pieces of my shirt that I had.

Take three pieces of the shirt remnants, laid them on top of each other and pinned them to my pants.  

Pull on them gently so they stretched and kind of curled a bit.

Braid them.

Unpin, measure to make sure it will fit over your hand, overlap the ends a bit and straight stitch (or hand stitch) through to connect them.

And that’s it for this one.  I left one of the ends kind of longer and jagged for fun.  

You saw me wear this back here in this post.

You can make other kinds really easily too!

Take two pieces of contrasting fabric, and lay them on top of each other.

Place them in your machine and twist them together, then straight stitch down the length.

Measure around your hand, sew the ends together, and voila!  

Here’s one I didn’t take pictures of, but it’s an easy concept that you’ve probably used before.  

Pin the strip to your pants.  

Twist the strip, a lot.

When the whole thing is twisted, fold the strip in half and it will twist around itself.  

I made two with just one strip each and then I sewed two of these together to make these:

You can also zig-zag stitch elastic to the back of a strip, pulling the elastic as you sew it down and then sew the ends of the ruffled strip together, like these:

And, not that I would ever wear every single one at the same time, but here they are:

EASY!  And cheap.  And the first of these projects that’s not for the baby in your life!  But that means no cute pictures.  Sorry.  Just my boring old arm.  

Again and again.  

linked: