Make-Something-Monday: T-shirt Necklaces

It's been a few months since my sister and I got together for make-something-monday. Okay, it's been since March, but we have thought about it! We finally made a plan for last night and opted for another t-shirt-based craft.  

tri-color t-shirt necklace

I pinned the t-shirt necklace awhile ago from this site, but there are a ton of blogs out there with the same/similar craft. We're not out to reinvent the wheel here folks, just share our version of things. This is fairly quick and easy, and requires little skill beyond cutting fabric. And your cut lines don't even need to be straight!

The t-shirt necklace is basically a bunch of loops of t-shirt that are doubled up and tied in one spot along the loops. It has the essence of an infinity scarf, which is all the rage this season (I think). The nice thing is that it is a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure for colors and size; more t-shirt colors available = more colorful necklace, bigger t-shirt = bigger loops = longer necklace, more loops = fatter necklace. We had about 6 or 7 t-shirts that we'd culled from our respective closest in a variety of colors; Gwen also had a few extra-large t-shirts left over from her work that we added to the collection. 

t-shirts!

The body of the t-shirt is used for the loops, and we cut strips from the bottom hem up. Since the bottom hem on most t-shirts has stitching it won't stretch very easily, so the first loop was discarded. 

cutting off the hem

action shot

left-handed cutting in action.
I may have eventually finished cutting gwen's loops. . . 

The t-shirts yielded between 16-20 loops, depending on the length. The longer the t-shirt you're using, the more loops you'll end up with. Most of the loops were about 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch wide.

nobody said they needed to be straight lines.
the OCD folks out there may want to draw lines on the t-shirt first,
although once the loops are stretched the cuts aren't even noticeable.

gwen's growing pile of loops

After the loops were cut, we stretched them out and the two cut edges curled in to create a tube-like loop. 

stretching the loops

mine.

hers.

The stretched loops were aligned and spread out, then twisted into a figure-8, then the opposite ends of the 8 were brought together and a spare loop was used to wrap the big bunch of loops together to secure it. 

figure 8

fold the figure 8 in half.

wrap an extra loop around the bunch to secure. 

The last step of wrapping the loops with a spare piece could be optional as the loops could just be doubled over like a normal infinity scarf. I think the wrapping helps to keep the bunches of loops together since there are a lot of them depending on the length and amount of the t-shirts used - a dozen to eighteen loops are in each of ours. We each made one tri-color necklace with the blue-white-turquoise t-shirts - these loops were close in size and the colors looked nice together and the finished product fits closely around the neck, and one mono-color with the dark gray t-shirts - these loops were quite large (the t-shirts were extra-large) and the finished product is looser and hangs lower. 

the close-fitting version of the t-shirt necklace

We did have a little help from our four-legged friends. . . 

here mom, I'll hold the loops for you.

hi mom, whatcha doin'?
(note crosby's hem-loop bling)

you mean I can't lie on your t-shirt? but my mom is done already. . .

but zoe got to lie on the shirt.
and I'm just holding it in place for you.

And of course we both chose to wear the gray one today. . . figures. . .