Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Making Super Chunky Yarn from Crushed Velvet Fabric


I've been wanting to have a go at making t-shirt yarn ever since I saw this tutorial on how to recycle an old t-shirt to make yarn.  The only thing that has put me off is that if I made it from a t-shirt, then I'd only be able to make a limited amount and I ALWAYS need more!

So for some time, I've been working on an idea to make a t-shirt style yarn from a length of jersey fabric - that way I could make as much as I like and still make more if I need to. 


I bought 4 metres of baby blue crushed velvet fabric and the sharpest scissors I could find and laid it out on the floor.


Then I cut a horizontal strip that was approximately 5 - 6cm wide.  When I was about 7cm from the selvedge I stopped and started cutting my strip from the opposite side.  I then just cut a curve to neaten up the sharp corner that was about a 6cm radius from the end of the cut.  I just kept on cutting like this, zig-zagging side to side, all the way up the fabric until I'd used all 4 metres.

It was as simple as that.  I must admit, it took quite a few hours, over a couple of days, but I've now got nearly 800grams of super chunky yarn at a little over £1.50 per 100g - which I think is pretty good!


 

Stay tuned for some extreme knitting...

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy these other blog posts - 


Making an Extreme Knitting Yarn Using
The Electric Eel Wheel yarn Counter

Small Round Knitted Pillow - Free Pattern

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9 comments:

cornercottage said...

Love this! The colour is beautiful.

Adorned From Above said...

I love this. I am going to give it a try. We have a link party called Wednesdays Adorned From Above Blog Hop and would love to have you share this and any other posts with everyone. It runs from Tuesday night through midnight Sunday. Here is the link to the party.
http://www.adornedfromabove.com/2013/03/wednesdays-adorned-from-above-blog-hop.html
We are also having a giveaway this week for a $50.00 Target Gift Card, so head over to enter.
We hope to see you there.
Debi and Charly @ Adorned From Above

Attemptthisathome said...

Looks great great! Where did you get material for $3 a meter i need to know! I have been wanting to do this, but all the material i found was too expensive…Thanks heaps!!

Kathryn - Craftmehappy said...

Thank you! I got the fabric from a UK website called FabricUK. Unfortunately I don't think they ship all over the world yet, but here's the link to the fabric for a bit more information - http://www.fabricuk.com/fabrics/71-crushed-velvet-plain-dyed.html

Nutsy said...

Awesome!!!!! I've been wanting to make my own T-shirt yarn and didn't for the same reason.
This works great but instead of scissors I used a T-square and my cutting wheel.
By placing the T on the edge of the fabric that I didn't want to cut, I could cut right up to needed spot no problem. Using the cutting wheel saved tons of time.

Arael said...

Neat idea! You could save yourself MAJOR time by using a rotary cutter instead of scissors. If you don't have one you can pick it up in act craft and fabric store or online. They're really popular among quilters. Cheers!

Teresa said...

What a fantastic idea, I will certainly give it a go

Unknown said...

I'm wondering if you could use fleece to make bulky yarn. has anyone tried that. What other type of fabrics do you think would make bulky yarn?

Yvonne Randall said...

What a wonderful idea. You eleiminate the joins that so many other prople have.