How to Repurpose Old Clothes in Japan: T-shirt Yarn

Getting rid of old clothes in Japan can be a challenge. If it's practically perfect quality, a second hand shop might take it. If it had any signs of wear and tear? Throw it in the bin or repurpose it. 

The environmental impact of just burning all the polyester and polyurethane is big and I don't really want to do that here. I'm environmentally conscious enough that throwing away a whole bunch of otherwise useful cloth tends to be challenging. 

It turns out that there are several ways to repurpose your old clothes. Today I'm tearing apart a hoodie given to me by someone who didn't want the guilt of throwing it in the garbage but also couldn't figure out what to do on her own. Originally, I had thought to use it as backing or part of a quilt, but looking closer at the condition of the material made me rethink that.

I've worked with damaged fabric enough to know that this level of pilling isn't fixable, especially in such a thin fabric. More washing will convert it into scraps in no time. What can I do?

I soon realized that the material would hold up well enough for t-shirt yarn, so I looked up some tutorials and went from there.

I chopped out the zipper first and put it to the side. Then I started ripping the seams out of all of the hems. I took sections and started cutting according to the guidelines I'd found online. With t-shirt yarn, if you want to make a single strand, you need to start with a tube shaped piece of fabric. The body wasn't up for that, so it became long strips. The sleeves were perfect for this though. 

I took a sleeve and laid it out flat. Then I folded it in half and cut 2-3cm wide strips, but only one third of the way through the fabric. After doing this down the whole sleeve, I laid it flat again.

Then cut the lines on the front in a diagnal fashion. Only cut the front layer like this. The back layer will go straight across instead.

After doing all the front diagonals, I cut the back side, too.

Now for the long flat pieces I chose to cut into strips. Some have said that you can cut a zigzag pattern down the length of the fabric, but I've noticed that this leaves a weird frill edge that I'm even less fond of that visible knots. Instead I'm using someone else's knotting method I found on youtube.

First, you make a small hole in one end. Then you make a small hole in the piece you're going to attach. Push the attaching piece through so that the attaching piece's hole is accessable.

Bring the tail of the attaching piece back through its own hole and adjust the holes so that they don't bunch up too much.

Pull tight and you're done.

Then repeat with all strips and ball it all up.

Now, instead of one lousy shirt that wasn't good enough quality for selling, most crafting, or even quilting, you have a whole ball of t-shirt yarn for your other crafting needs.