Recycle your shirt: Knitting bracelets with homemade cotton spaghetti

Summer is gone, longer sleeves replaced shirts and T-shirts, pieces of clothes that are infallible all year round. Some are washed away, or with fabric holes, torn, stretched, too small or too big, or with faded images. They usually look like the poorest piece of fabric in our closet. Do not throw them away! Give them another chance and extend their usage. You will be surprised how to do this.

Let’s make cotton spaghetti

#1 Pick your shirts and T-shirts you want to recycle

When you’ll be searching for a shirt or T-shirt pay attention that it doesn’t have side seam. Cotton spaghettis will be smoother when you’ll be knitting.

#2 Cut lapped seam first

#3 Cut shoulder part with sleeves

#4 Folding a shirt vertically and cutting the stripes

When you’ll be folding a shirt vertically, pay attention, that you don’t fold it equally. Leave some space at the top, approximately 3 cm (1.2 in). Cut the stripes, approximately 2 cm (0.8 in) wide but DON’T make a whole cut till the end of fabric. Cut of the stripe goes a bit further than folded part.

#5 Cutting the “ribs”

This is the most important part of making cotton spaghetti. Wrong cut means short spaghetti. Put the middle part to the center. Check the red lines how to cut properly.

#6 Cotton spaghetti

Stretch every meter (every 40 in) of cotton spaghetti before rolling it into a ball.

How to make a macramé bracelet?

Macramé braiding technique isn’t a new thing. It was already used in ancient times. This is a form of textile produced using knotting techniques. These techniques consist of various combinations of reef knots and half hitches. You can tie this bracelet in a knot and wear it all the time or you can tie it in a bow and take it off whenever you want.

First you need to prepare 2-3 different colors of cotton spaghetti. We have chosen blue spaghetti for the base. You can measure the length of spaghetti very easily – wrap spaghetti 4 times round your wrist (picture 1). Halve spaghetti to set your base (picture 2). The length of the other two spaghetti (green and black) is double length of the base (picture 3). Sort them (like in picture 4) – halve blue base and put it in the middle, the whole length of green to the left side, and the whole length of black to the right side. For easier knitting, tape the upper part to the table.