T-Shirt Rug Tutorial

April 3, 2016September 22, 2020 / reginaalexisweiss / 63 Comments

Here’s another project that fits firmly into the “tired of staring at it because it’s been sitting on my desk for over a year so I might as well finish it” category!

There’s no real reason that it took me so long to finish, other than I got continuously distracted by other projects and lost my momentum on it. It was the fourth crocheted t-shirt rug from this series that I posted a while ago, in which I allude to the method but don’t provide much of an explanation. Today I am remedying that!

But FIRST! Here’s how to make T-shirt yarn via Endlessly Inspired.

I got the idea of using yarn to crochet around the t-shirt strips from Pinterest (of course) but felt that I could make things a little more interesting by experimenting with stitch designs..

…. which was fun, but sometimes one desires a more mindless exercise. So I experimented with ducking the t-shirt yarn strip in front of and behind the stitch, and came up with a design that makes the strip form eye-pleasing rings of bobbles or nubs, or in the case of my most recent rug, stones on sand.

Crocheting around the T-shirt yarn in this way is soooooo much easier, neater-looking, and more economical than trying the crochet the t-shirt yarn itself. I always make my own t-shirt yarn, so it’s also better because it’s easy to switch from one ball to another with this method. So enough talk… how is it done?

Crocheted T-shirt Rug How-To

UPDATE 3/2020: I now have a video on my YouTube Channel that demonstrates this technique – view this video by following the link or keep scrolling to view right here on the blog 🙂

You need:

A large amount of cotton or acrylic yarn (A skein of Caron One Pound usually gets the job done nicely, with some to spare)

T-shirt Yarn (I use home-made, but store bought works too!)

A 6.00 mm hook

Start by making a magic ring. 6 sc into the ring tightly. Sc into the first sc of the first round to begin a joinless, in-the-round crochet circle. *

*I will not be giving instructions for increases in the round because I’m making the assumption that the crocheter already knows how to handle this – just work them in the same proportion as you usually would or decide how many you need to keep it flat as you go.

In the second round of stitching, hold the t-shirt yarn flat against the last row and start to stitch the single crochet over the tail of this yarn until you have worked 3-5 stitches or have anchored it securely. Once you have secured the t-shirt yarn, you will begin weaving it in and out of the sc stitches.

DSCN4483 — This isn’t a picture of the second round, but you can see where I have begun the new strip by anchoring it within the sc stitching before I start weaving it in and out.

Continuing to work in the round (and adding increases where necessary), hold the t-shirt yarn to the back of your work and work a sc in the next stitch. Keep in mind that the t-shirt yarn should be completely to the back of the work so that the yarn is not held within the stitch at all.

*Tightening the sc after working it by holding the loop steady and pulling on your working yarn makes the rug nice and firm and helps the t-shirt yarn bobbles look neat.

Before you work the next stitch, bring the t-shirt yarn completely to the front of the work, so that you are working your next sc behind the t-shirt strand.

Work the next sc, tighten it down if necessary, then return the t-shirt strand to the back of the work – this will wrap the t-shirt yarn around the stitch you just made, creating a little t-shirt bobble.

With the t-shirt yarn at the back, make another sc in the next stitch.

Continue alternating holding the t-shirt yarn in front or back, until you get near the end of the strand or decide to change colors. Return the t-shirt yarn to the top of your work and work a series of several sc stitches OVER the yarn, so that it is trapped in the stitch again. Do this until the end is reached, then begin the next strand the same way.

I like to vary the proportion of bobbles in the front (i.e – bring the t-shirt yarn to the front every two stitches, every three stitches, etc) to provide visual interest, or alternate rounds of bobbles with rounds of t-shirt yarn carried along inside openwork stitches.

T-Shirt Yarn Rug Video Demo:

UPDATE 3/2020 & 9/2020: I did eventually make a video guide/tutorial for how I make these rugs! It covers the basic strategies of how I start the rugs in Part 1 (following the basic increases formula to produce a flat circle and then adding in the yarn and crocheting around it) and then how to finish a unique rug in Part 2 (goes over the tricks I use to freeform the outer rings of the rug to create decorative stitching). Hope you enjoy!

DSCN1349 — T-shirt yarn carried inside openwork stitches (granny blocks in this case)

As I’ve mentioned before, carrying T-shirt yarn along while you crochet regular yarn is a lot easier on your hands than trying to crochet the t-shirt yarn itself! And this way, there’s tons of variations you can try.

My rugs usually end up being somewhere between 32-45″, for use as small accent rugs or even table centerpieces (and if you use all cotton materials, really awesome hotpads are possible!) Lately, I’ve been thinking more about making them specifically for use as djembe rugs for the drum-circle going type! This of course has nothing to do with the djembe I recently purchased after a drumming workshop.

Typical. I finally finish a project that I’ve been dragging my feet on, and I immediately want to start another.

-MF

Fractal Plying on a Drop Spindle

July 14, 2015December 6, 2022 / reginaalexisweiss / 13 Comments

Fractal plying seems to be everywhere I look in the spinning world. And for good reason- it’s an interesting way to work with color that adds a bit of spontaneity and surprise to the look of the finished product. I’ve been excitedly waiting for the right moment to spin up the 50/50 Merino Silk top from Corgi Hill Farm, and this seemed to be it.

Ben from Schacht Spindle Blog has a wonderful explanation of fractal spinning here. It’s really fairly straightforward for a 2-ply yarn: Take roving, split in half down the middle. Set aside one 1/2 portion, take the other 1/2 portion and split it into quarters.

The 1/2 portion gets spun from end to end into a single, creating long color changes. The quarter portions get spun end to end one after another into one long single with four repeats of shorter color changes. At the end the two lengths are plied together. See? Barely any math at all!

The key to keeping things fractal is always spinning from the same direction. Say one end of your roving is red and one is blue. If you start to spin one portion of roving from the red end, you will also start every other portion of roving from the red end as well.

Lovely right? Except I’m working with a drop spindle, which presents unique problems. There’s simply no way I am going to fit 2 oz of laceweight single ply on a 5/8 oz drop spindle, which means that my two portions of fiber can’t be spun or plied as uninterrupted singles. Since most descriptions of fractal plying are on spinning wheels, this problem isn’t mentioned much – you load your 1/2 portion onto a bobbin and your 4 1/8 portions onto a different bobbin – easy. Not so with the spindle – 21 g of fiber loaded on was pushing it.

The only other reference to fractal plying with a drop spindle I have seen so far is the Spinning for Stripes series of posts from “Mom” at Simply Notable. After some comment-area sleuthing, I discovered that Mom using felted joining on her singles to get around this problem.

I am way too uptight and control-freaky for that, plus my attempts at felted joins never seem to hold up (especially not in this case, since my fiber is half silk!). I was going to have to spin separate skeins.

My solution? Spin one of my quarter portions from end to end – load onto a toilet paper roll, and weigh it out (subtracting the weight of the cardboard roll). This portion weighed out to 17 grams.

The short repeat ply is up front (labeled as 1/4 – 17 g) and the longer repeat is at the back.

Take the 1/2 portion (the roving that is half of the original) and weigh out the first 17 grams, taking care to start at the correct end, and separate the length (as you would to grab a piece – not down the middle). Spin up this 17 grams and load it onto a toilet paper roll. Once plied together with the 17 grams of 1/4 portion, this will be Skein #1.

The first 17 g of the 1/2 portion of roving

This first part worked awesomely, producing a perfectly matched pair of plies to make into a yarn.

The first two singles plied together to form the first skein of fractal yarn.

The moment I measured out 21 grams for the next skein, I knew there would be a problem: Due to my imprecise splitting of the roving, my main roving section was not going to measure up to all my 1/4 portions. I was going to have over 10 grams of leftover singles. Disappointing.

Well, next time I will weigh out my roving as I’m splitting it, and hopefully that will help. As for the leftover singles, I will just ply them differently. Carrying on!

The weighing strategy worked well, at least, for making sure my plies were nearly the same length – the yardage for #2 was not perfectly matched like for #1, but it was very close.

I couldn’t resist posting pictures, even though I am still currently working on producing skein #3. I did mess around with chain/Navajo plying some of the extra fiber, for comparing and contrasting and such.

The Navajo ply method keeps the colors tidily separated

Lastly I’d like to add that since my fiber was dyed in a repeating colorway, it’s not really vital to the look of the future FO that I carefully number my skeins – because each skein has a very similar look. However, were I working with a fiber dyed in a gradient colorway the order in which I worked up my skeins would matter a lot more because each skein would contain a long color repeat ply that was different than the other skeins. Now, more pictures.

I dubbed this yarn “Bag of Jewels” because of the gemstone colors and the rich sheen the silk adds to the finished product. I am excited to knit something with it, but the work involved with spinning it in the first place is definitely an accomplishment in its own right!

-MF

EDIT 9/8/15 – If you’d like a more in-depth look on how to choose rovings for fractal spinning, here’s a great article (as always) from Knitty.

EDIT 6/7/16 – I ended up crocheting with this fractal ply yarn, if you’re curious to see how fractal ply measures up to being crocheted, you can see the piece featuring this yarn here. As usual with variegated yarns, crocheted pieces muddle the colors more, but it did turn out lovely all the same. AND I was able to make a knit headband to match.

2-Ply or Not 2-Ply?

June 6, 2015May 7, 2016 / reginaalexisweiss / 1 Comment

So far my spinning accomplishments have limited myself to singles (one-ply yarns) for multiple reasons.

One is that I adore singles for their neat, sleek appearance and the wonderful stitch definition you get from them, as well as the beautiful way colors pop on a single-ply strand. Witness!

Knit Picks Chroma Fingering

Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable

Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball

Another reason I have remained single-ply is that within my current range of spinning equipment, plying any decent length of yarn is a really royal pain.

So why ply at all? F&%$ it, right?

Of course not. Art is about SMASHING YOUR LIMITATIONS!!!

Spinning a single requires allowing enough twist to enter the fiber so that it has some strength and doesn’t just fall apart. The twist increases the density of the fiber, making the strand firmer the more you twist it. This means that a really strong strand or ply is going to be pretty firm as well – and why would you want to stitch up clothing that feels like a bunch of rope rather than cushy, soft yarn?

Of course, as illustrated above, there are plenty of single ply yarns that are more than adequate for making cushy soft things. Plying is merely one way to balance strength and fluff – allowing 2 plies of fiber to unleash some of their twist energy by winding around each other fluffs them up while combining their strength.

I came to fully realize this concept when I began to spin a sample piece of Targhee roving. I’ll save my rave reviews of this breed’s fiber for another post – for now I’ll just say that I spun it fairly thin (which was easy because this stuff is AWESOME.. ahem). But, damn, the spongy wonderfulness of this wool didn’t seem to translate into my spun single. It was just too dense.

The Targhee single in the completed Andean wrap “bracelet”

Since this was just a sample yarn I was doing for fun, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out Andean plying, a method of producing 2-ply yarn using only one strand of 1-ply, using (as far as I can tell) some sort of weird mountain shaman yarn magic.

Just kidding. The Andean ply wrap is really not as complicated as it looks, once you try it out.

This special way of wrapping allows you to feed the two opposite ends of the single strand onto your spindle at once, plying them together.

WARNING: Wrap loosely, for the sake of your digits. My tension was not relaxed enough and by the end my middle finger was purple and felt like it was going to fall off, which would suck, because that is my favorite finger.

Once I had that conquered, I plied my yarn, making sure to spin my spindle in the opposite direction (clockwise) that my single ply was spun (counterclockwise). Spinning clockwise produces what is referred to as an “z” twist, while counterclockwise is referred to as “s” twist.

Do you see an “z” in there? I don’t.

Success! What was once a very firm single that would have made a terrible hat was transformed into a soft 2-ply, retaining the bouncy charm of the Targhee fiber but with the strength of a single. It would make a great hat, if I had more than 40 yards of it. Maybe that will soon be remedied.

-MF

P.S – I knitted up a tiny swatch just to see what it was like. As this great article from Knitty Spin attests, handspun does indeed have an energy unique and different than machine made. Mine was practically leaping off of my needles! Interesting.

Increases and Decreases in Tunisian Simple Stitch

April 20, 2015December 6, 2022 / reginaalexisweiss / 12 Comments

Ahh, Tunisian. It’s like the bastard child of knitting and crochet. Like ~~knochet~~… ~~critting~~ … I guess we’ll stick with Tunisian.

Tunisian Simple Stitch combines all the solidity of crochet with the flat smooth feel of knitted fabric while creating a dual texture: woven-looking on one side and nubby (somewhat garter-stitch-esque) on the other. If you have never tried Tunisian crochet I highly recommend experimenting with it. If you need a good guide to learning it, check out this free tutorial for beginners on my blog for Tunisian Simple Stitch or my free tutorials for Tunisian Knit Stitch.

The best crochet washcloth I ever made was with Tunisian Simple Stitch and a vintage terrycloth boucle yarn. I will never again crochet a washcloth that is not Tunisian stitch. That’s how good this thing is.

So, lets get started!

I had some trouble locating a quick photo guide to increasing and decreasing in Tunisian simple stitch the other day, so I jumped to provide. The extended instructions are below. Hope it inspires you!

Both increases and decreases are made on the forward pass of Tunisian simple stitch.

Increases are placed between two vertical bars (shown highlighted in green) on the forward pass. Insert the hook into the gap (shown circled) wherever you wish to place the increase.

After inserting the hook through the gap as shown, draw up a loop to keep on the hook as you would if you were working one of the vertical bars.

Continue to work the row as normal (make sure you don’t miss the vertical bar right after the increase!)

Shown above is the forward pass, with the increase stitch highlighted in blue. Once you finish the forward pass, work the return pass as normal.

Shown above is the swatch with the increase stitch highlighted in blue.

Decreases are placed by combining two vertical bars on the forward pass.

Insert the hook under two vertical bars at once.

Yarn over and draw the loop through both bars. Continue the forward pass as usual.

Shown above is the swatch with the decreased stitch highlighted in green.

You can also make a decrease in Tunisian simple stitch by merely skipping one vertical bar, but I don’t prefer this method. Enjoy ~~knitchet~~ ~~croshit~~ … uh, stitching.

-MF