It's Marie Made!: How to: Make a T-Shirt Yarn Necklace

In my last post, I showed you a picture of a giant ball of stripy yarn. Just to refresh your memory, look below:

Would you believe I have TWO of these?? Each skein is approximately 200 metres! It's a stretchy type of fabric known as t-shirt yarn or "tarn". (You can google how to make t-shirt yarn and there are lots of intructionals about how to make it from old t-shirts. I'm more of a ready-made kind of girl!)

I've been wanting to make SOMETHING with it for ages, but the only patterns and projects I've seen have been for crochet. So I decided to bite the bullet and teach myself to crochet, I didn't think it would be too hard, given I more or less taught myself to knit. I found this pattern for a fabulous chunky knit basket which I thought would be perfect for this type of yarn. Also, it is fairly large so I figured a I would use up most of the yarn.

After trying out several patterns, this one in particular, I decided to put the big basket on the back burner and try something a little more simple. I haven't given up, just what I envisaged and what has actually been made have turned out to be poles apart! I did make this little basket, which is my first official finished crochet project:

It's a bit wonky, and smaller than what I was wanting. My son thought it was a hat (he doesn't understand handles!) BUT it's a start!

It seems really hard to find projects that use the t-shirt yarn fabric. I have done a lot of googling, and baskets and necklaces seem to be the only thing that come up. I tried to make a necklace that used crochet but it didn't sit right with the yarn, so the idea was to simplify it right down.

I like working with beads and have dabbled a little in jewellery making. I thought if I got some chunky colourful beads, they would look great on the yarn. So I came up with this:

This is a REALLY easy project that anyone could do, great for kids. You could use any type of thick cord or fabric cut into strips. For my necklace, I used these:

(And a large tapestry needle) I used enough yarn that I could have four necklace strands, each measuring 50cm in length when worn. You might need to adjust yours depending on how short/long you want it to be.

And it's literally just as simple as threading the bead onto your yarn, and tying a knot at each end of the bead to hold it in place. It's really easy to adjust the beads as you can loosen and tighten the knots along the length. I put 2 or 3 beads on each strand.

I tied a knot at the top to secure each strand, and then used some extra yarn to wrap the top of the necklace to tidy up the loose ends and- Voila!

A funky piece of new jewellery!