An Upcycled Knit or Crochet Rug From T-Shirts

T-shirt jersey material is soft and super absorbent, which makes it perfect material to upcycle a knit or crochet rug from t shirts. You can make your own mat in different ways, not just crocheting or knitting — you can hook, braid, sew, or loom it too. In this super simple tutorial, I will show you how to knit yourself a rug. (I love to crochet these rugs, too!)

You can also make cutouts from old t shirts too.

An Upcycled Knit or Crochet Rug From T Shirts

I am working on making some spiffy new graphics. Hope you like them! If you do, drop me a comment. And — you can also buy t-shirt yarn if you don’t want to go to the trouble of making your own.

My husband had a few white t-shirts that he was donating to Salvation Army. I snagged them before they went into the donation bin. 🙂

I started by cutting the bottom hem off the t-shirt. Starting from the bottom, notch out the start and just keep cutting around and around.

I like to stretch out the t-shirt as I go.

I like to ravel it into a ball.

Keep the ends unstretched, though.

Once you get to the end of the bottom of the t-shirt, you should be left with the sleeves and a front and back panel. Cut off the hem of the sleeves, and then cut the sleeves off the main panel.

Using a circular manner like pictured, cut the t-shirt “string.”

Now, separate the front and back, and create more string in the same manner.

That’s because you are going to fold it in half, and make a little notch cut.

So by now you will have a bunch of string pieces. For each end, you will have notches (except the start and end of the total ball of string). To attach the strings together, you want to put one end (remember, this end has a notch) inside the other end’s notch.

Then, take the end (not attached to each notch), and string it through the notch of the first string. You want to basically make a loop through the notched holes.

Now, just knit, crochet, or use the ball of string as you normally would. I knit my rug with a cast-on of 50 stitches in stockinette stitch. Weave in the ends as you normally would on the wrong side.

The end will curl since it’s a stockinette stitch.

Solve this problem by ironing them out. Use the cotton setting! It’s okay, jersey is tough stuff.

The Final

Would you upcycle some old t-shirts to make yourself a bath rug?

As you can see, Joe Paw loves his new bath mat!