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Making Your Own Recycled Yarn

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Have fun crafting and recycling.

Make cool stuff and help the Earth at the same time. If you like to knit, crochet, or any other yarn craft have a go at using recycled materials. You can make your own yarn using plastic bags, thrift store sweaters, scraps, and t-shirts.

And make something new at the same time.

The numbers are scary. It can take up to 1,000 years for a plastic shopping bag to decompose and each year an estimated 500 billion plastic bags are sold worldwide. That's around 12 million barrels of oil just used to make bags. The best option of course is to use fabric shopping bags but that still leaves millions of bags out there used by other people. How about collecting some of those bags from friends and family and turn them into something useful or beautiful?

Yarn is getting expensive, especially high quality wool yarn. You can find great quality wool sweaters in thrift stores for much less than the cost of new yarn. Try unraveling a few sweaters for the yarn.

T-shirts wear out quickly (and kids grow out of them so fast) try cutting then into strips for yarn. You can make sturdy soft crafts from this type of yarn.

Want to try something unusual? Dig out some old VHS tapes and use the tape as yarn! Also works with cassette tapes.

Recycled Yarn Links

gooseflesh: How to make plastic bag Yarn: Making plastic bag yarn.
Double thick plastic bag yarn: The below instructions are for making the double thick "yarn" using the plastic bags, you will need to use a larger hook when using this method.
Recycling yarn / Unravelling thrift store sweaters: If the cost of quality wool gets you down then consider visiting your local thrift store and buying wool sweaters there. The average price here is US$3.00-7.00/sweater and 50% off days save even more money. It takes me an evening in front of the TV to unravel a sweater.
My Recycled Bags.com » How To Use Vcr Vhs Tape As Yarn: How To Use Vcr Vhs Tape As Yarn
Make your own magic using knotted yarn leftovers: A few years back, I took a class from Valentina Devine, who lives in Los Alamos, N.M., and I learned about the "magic ball." It's a big ball made from odds and ends of knotted fibers that have been sorted together, according to your choice of colorway, and then wound into working "yarn."
Make T-Shirt Yarn for Different Crochet Crafts - Associated Content: Using old t-shirts from your scrap bag is a great way to reduce garbage and recycle their fabric. Making t-shirt yarn is easy and fun. It can be used for a lot of crochet projects for your wardrobe and your home. This article will explain how to make t-shirt yarn and how to use it.
The Joy of Handspinning: The Web Site For Handspinners: Worldwide supplier of spinning wheels, carding equipment, natural fiber roving & top, weaving looms and equipment, books, how-to-articles, multimedia cd-rom, online courses and video demonstrations, for handspinners, weavers, and fiber artists.
Handspinning: This lens will point you towards the best books, blogs, fiber sources and inspiration for handspinners. Its lensmaster, Shannon Okey, is the author of Spin To Knit (Interweave Press -- October 2006) as well as the Knitgrrl learn-to-knit books for teens and tweens.
laughing purple goldfish designs: 'no-join' method of cutting fabric strips: This method is by far the BEST way to cut doona (duvet/quilt) covers into strips. Love it, love it, love it! Plus it works brilliantly for pillowcases. I have also successfully used this method to cut sleeves/legs of clothing into strips. It works for any 'tube' of fabric. And it's also the method I use for cutting plastic bags into 'plarn'
Plastic Bag Bags are where it's at.: Plastic Bag Bags: an answer to global warming ... that you can carry towels in. REDUCE ? REUSE ? RECYCLE
All you need is plastic bag and a crochet hook.
Rag Knitting Tutorial : cocoknits: How to cut rags for knitting.

Plastic Bag Yarn Flickr Photos

Curtesy of gooseflesh

curated content from Flickr

T-shirt Yarn Video

[9/30/08] How To Make T-Shirt Yarn: by Indie5Collective | video info

40 ratings | 12,999 views

curated content from YouTube

Recycled Yarn Projects

You've made your yarn now here's some ideas for using it.

Craftzine.com blog: Plastic Bag Crafts: Round up the bags you do have laying around in the house or collect them from neighbors and friends to start reusing plastic bags for your next craft project. Here's a post rounding up some of the best projects we've seen around. Sew 'em up, cut them into strips for knitting or crochet -- the possibilities are endless!
My Recycled Bags.com: Projects made with plastic bag yarn.
Hints for plastic bag yarn: Crocheting with plastic bags - Hints and tips
Round Plastic Bag Tote: Round Plastic Bag Tote Pattern
It's HERE!!! A FREE Plarn Kitty Purse Pattern - Crochetville Forum: It's HERE!!! A FREE Plarn Kitty Purse Pattern Free Original Patterns - Links

This is made not with plastic bags but with disposable plastic tablecloths! So next time you're at a party, wedding, etc that is using these ask for a few to clean up and recycle.
miriam dema: Labor!: On Saturday I went to Michael Levine's to get fabric for my pennants! I bought 5 yards of 100% cotton in Tomato, Papaya, and Orange. The colors are so bright and vivid! After tearing off the selvage I realized I had enough to make something with it! So on Sunday after a yummy Dim Sum breakfast I made a cute scarf.

More Patterns for You

Cephalopod Patterns for Squidoo'ers

Buy Recycled Yarn

Wool Peddler: Recycled Silk & Banana Silk Yarns, Handpainted & Handspun Yarns: The Wool Peddler Yarns and Fibers: Recycled Silk Yarn, Banana Silk Yarn, Handpainted Yarn and Spinning Fiber, Handspun Yarn, patterns, kits, more....wholesale and retail.
Recycled Silk Himalayan Yarn from Nepal: Fairly traded recycled silk yarn, sari yarn, silk yarn products from women's cooperatives in Nepal
Etsy :: craftyyarn :: the fiber rescue project - 100% recycled yarn: Welcome to C R A F T Y, where you'll find a variety of yarn, all 100% recycled. Many of my yarns are recycled (unraveled) from gently-used, high-quality sweaters. Others are handspun from mill ends and other scrap fiber. Either way, you're getting a beautiful yarn that makes use of our society's scraps without stressing the planet.
Jag's Funky Fibers: Why Recycle? Recycling gives crafters the opportunity to work with the finest yarns at reasonable prices. My Fibers have been carefully hand selected from fine sweaters, thoroughly cleaned, and rewound into skeins.
eBay Store - The Twice Sheared Sheep: Wool Yarn, Stitch Markers, Silk Yarn: Welcome to the Twice Sheered Sheep where we believe that yarn unfortunate enough to be born as a store bought sweater still deserves to be made into a hand made item. We offer luxury quality recycled yarn, hand made stitch markers, and other knitting accessories. New items added almost every day!
MishMash Yarns: MishMash Yarns Home of the recycled ecofriendly yarn market

Making Your Own Recycled Yarn

Have fun crafting and recycling.

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

Have fun with recycling.

And make something new at the same time.

Recycled Yarn Links

Plastic Bag Yarn Flickr Photos

Curtesy of gooseflesh

T-shirt Yarn Video

Recycled Yarn Projects

You've made your yarn now here's some ideas for using it.

More Patterns for You

Cephalopod Patterns for Squidoo'ers

Buy Recycled Yarn

Shops Selling Recycled Yarn Crafts

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