DIY: Recycled Tshirt Scarf Necklace Roundup

I've been loving the wave of tshirt scarves and necklaces bouncing around on the interwebs and have wanted to make one of my own for a while now. After scavenging for the best of the best, I offer you a roundup of my favorite DIY scarves as well as my own. You know... I had an hour. Besides, literally all you need is an old t-shirt and a pair of scissors. And if you really want to get crafty, you could bust out the needle and thread. If you're in need of an hour or less craft project with practically zero cleanup - this is it.


First, my favorites and where I drew inspiration for my own.

Scarves by hellohoneyno.com seen at method

Necklace-Scarf DIY tutorial at Ecouterre.com

Recycled Tee Scarf at Schwin&Schwin

Scarfy/necklace thing on Crafster by Skaborsk

Now mine. Literally, 1 hour, start to finish. That even included searching for my scissors, which had mysteriously disappeared. I bought a men's large tshirt from the thrift store for $1. No need to go fancy for this, just find a color that you like.

I think shirts without seams give you more flexibility, but then maybe you want to see them. I decided to go for a sleek-tangled look, more like the one from hellohoneyno (note: i cannot access her website, so i have no idea how she did hers, only that I like the final look).

1. Cut the bottom hem off at to create a straight line along the bottom. Like many men's shirts nowadays, the back is longer than the front. I believe that is to hide plumber's butt.

2. Cut 1 inch strips across the shirt all the way up to the armpits. No need be perfect about it, once you stretch out the strips, you'll never notice.

By-the-by, I got 17 strips out of my shirt - you may get more or less depending on how long your shirt and how wide your strips.

3. Take the strips and stretch them out aiming to make them each about the same length. You'd have to stretch really hard in order to break or rip them, so no need to be gentle.

4. Since, I had a shirt with seams, I wanted to hide the seams underneath the wrapping.

I also didn't want the seams to create a giant lumps, so when I gathered the loops I spread the seams out a bit and then tried to get the loops as straight and untangled as a I could. I used 16 of my loops.

5. With the 17th loop, I cut it in half at the seams to use as the wrapper on either end. First I tucked the strip into the loops and then started wrapping tightly and *neatly* to cover the seams. At the end of the wrapping, I did some creative knot to tie it off. Then I used the other half of the strip to do the other side.

6. And there you have it. Start to finish, less than an hour and you've got yourselves a cute and comfortable scarf, necklace, decorative thingie.