Cutting Continuous T-Shirt Yarn = Frickin' Rad

I came across this Pin a few weeks ago and could hardly contain my excitement. With this simple trick, I've been able to filter through the piles of clothes that I no longer wear and combine two of my passions: crocheting and re-purposing of everyday items. The tutorial from the video is clear and easy to follow and I didn't have to change anything. The process is a little time-consuming but pretty mindless and not challenging at all. My kids were with their father for the weekend and I ended up with the stomach flu (awesome, right?), so I spent all day Saturday on the couch, watching bad movies and making yarn.

The only issue I encountered, happened when I didn't leave a large enough space at the top of the fold; make sure you leave a solid two inches, otherwise you'll end up with too-thin strips when you're finishing with the scissors and the fabric will rip when you go through the stretching step. I also found that tissue-tees/burn-out tees don't work because they are too thin to sustain the stretching step.

I started with 14 ratty, ugly old tees and long-sleeved shirts and ended up with 12 balls of t-shirt yarn in varying colors; the bottom picture is the finished product. One tissue tee didn't work and another long-sleeved tee was shot; rather than curl up when I stretched it, it simply expanded into a sad, wide strip that was unusable. I'm going to start by making some fun rugs for the bathrooms and kids rooms; they'll be washable and absorbent and better yet, Free!

The only problem now is containing myself from going through every item of clothing in our house and tossing everything in my to-be-cut pile. So you can bet your sweet ass I'll be trucking down to Goodwill this weekend and picking up some XXXL ugliness on the cheap, all in the name of homemade handicrafts. (Napoleon Dynamite reference, anyone?)

Link to the original Pin and video tutorial