Fun T-Shirt Re-Purposing | Family Economics

By Cathe

One of the best all-time mediums for graphic designers has been the T-shirt. No doubt you have many colorful “T’s” tucked in the closets of your home. Well here are some fun ideas for re-purposing those rarely worn, out-dated ones along with colorful graphic T-shirts you can find at thrift stores and tag sales.

The T-shirt quilt
• This project is popular for sending your loved one away to college or just a great way to scrapbook the years of activities into a functional blanket.
• If your children are young, begin collecting their old sports T-shirts, special event apparel, etc.
• Cut out large same-size squares from the graphic area of each shirt and sew into a simple patchwork quilt.

The T-shirt scarf
• Cropping the images on T-shirts makes or breaks a well-designed scarf.
• Find several colorful shirts at second-hand shops, or use shirts your family would normally donate.
• Crop tight on the designs to create wildly unique apparel accessories such as these T-shirt scarves made from thrift store finds.

The travel pillow
• Small travel pillows made from your child’s out-grown T-shirt can be a nice little comfort when traveling.
• Turn the T-shirt inside-out and sew a large rectangle within the body of the shirt, leaving an area open for turning and stuffing.
• Trim away excess fabric and turn the piece right-side out.
• Stuff with pillow filling and seam up the opening.
• Make extra pillows to keep in the car for long trips.

The altered T-shirt
• You can find unlimited ideas for altering T-shirts into fabulous “new” styles with a simple search on the Internet.
• My favorite is utilizing colorful and graphic sections of shirts to create fun play clothes for children, adding ruffled sections to the bottom of modified shirts to create a dress or cutting and sewing one large shirt into a onesie for a small child.