There are a ton of crafts you are encouraged to make out of t-shirts, from bracelets to woven rugs to quilts. This is another craft where the idea itself is reasonably sound. I personally don't really care for t-shirt material as a crafting material, I think it feels weird and elastic and tends to curl in a way that annoys me. But that's a personal preference, not an objective judgment.
And it's true that when you see people's t-shirt crafts, they look pretty great. And so thrifty, right?
Well, I wonder.
The idea behind these crafts is that you will use t-shirts that you no longer want. You'll save your old shirts from the dump! It's ecologically sound! Plus it's always nice to craft with a material you already have on hand.
But here is something I have learned from the crafts that I personally have tried to make from used t-shirts: my used t-shirts suck. For one thing, they are almost all black. I have a few that are either gray or dark brown. For another thing, because they are old (that's why I am cutting them up for crafts, after all) they have a lot of fading and have worn thin.
Other people might have more brightly-colored t-shirts, especially if you have kids, I suppose. But my guess is that a significant percentage of people's unwanted t-shirts are the cheap white cotton jobbies you get as a promo item at a conference or something. What are you going to make out of those?
Used t-shirt projects qualify as a Bad Craft because in order to do it right and make something good, you basically have to go buy a bunch of t-shirts in the right colors and condition. Which completely defeats the purpose of making something out of used t-shirts!
Image courtesy Flickr/Thomanication
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