BITS: DIY: Make Your Own Trapillo (or T-shirt) Yarn

Trapillo yarn is the next cool thing, trust me, I know (also, it's all over Pinterest...). It's super comfortable and bulky, you can make everything from housewares, to baby clothes to cool hats out of it. And the best part about trapillo yarn? You can repurpose old t-shirts and leggings to make your own!

I've been on a big house purge lately. Maybe it's Spring in the air, (or maybe it's the fact that I've been making stuff all winter and not really been cleaning up after myself..) but I just feel like I have so much stuff everywhere. I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about how I yearn for a quality closet full of items that I really want to wear, rather than just a bunch of stuff that I constantly have to search through to find something to wear. I'm happy to say that I finally started that purge (finally) and boy does it feel good. Actually, right now I'm at the stage where everything is sort of a bigger mess, but you can feel the change in the air, the trapillo is sort of (definitely) a procrastination.

Making trapillo is super easy, all you need to get started is:

-An old t-shirt (I find the thin stretchy ones work really well- you could also use leggings)
-Fabric scissors (While we're at it, check out this meme- almost died of happiness)
-A ruler (This is optional... I started without one and realised that it would probably turn out better if I used one, so I changed my mind half way into the project- I guess I should say ruler recommended)

Directions:

1. Lay your shirt flat, aligning the side seams and hem so that the front and back of the shirt lay flat on top of one another without too many wrinkles or bubbles. I found that steaming (or ironing) the shirt before I started made a big difference in ease.

2. Cut the hem off of your shirt, or unpick and press flat.

3. Draw horizontal lines across your shirt about 1 inch apart. (I tried freestyling this, it's actually easier to just draw the lines. A couple minutes here saves a bunch of confusion and frustration later)

4. Cut the lines through both layers leaving about 2-3 inches of uncut space along one side of the shirt.

5. Now you have to connect all the lines you just cut so that you have one continuous pieces that spirals up the shirt. I did this by going inside to the back layer and cutting all the lines up to the sideseam. Then I went back to the top layer and finished all the top cuts at an upwards diagonal so that they line up with the back cuts a level up from their own. The picture explains it a little better:

6. Keep going until it's all one long piece.

7. Now you'll have to stretch it out a bit. Because it's a knit it will curl under at the edges. This makes it look all nice and perfect no matter how haggard your cutting was ;)

8. And that's it. Roll it up into a ball and dig out those knitting needles. I already know what I'm going to make, one of those awesome EEK hats that Wool and the Gang made for the GILES FW2014 show.