[I may not have re-made any tees recently, but I did make these strawberry cupcakes last week for my birthday party]
My recent “How to customise & recycle your old t-shirts” post has received quite a lot of attention around the blogosphere, not quite to the levels of the Star Wars post (which made my server cry repeatedly), but still, a lot of people seemed to like it. I get a real buzz when people take the time to write about a post I’ve written, and it’s good to think that I might be responsible for someone hacking their tees to bits and making something cool out of it.
In no particular order, here’s some of the folks that have posted about the list (it has apparently had 38 retweets, but I can’t find a way of getting the full list).
I’m sure that isn’t all of them so apologies if you mentioned the post and I didn’t manage to catch it, if that’s the case list it in the comments please. I’m intending to do this kind of shoutout post for all my big list posts that I’ll be publishing in the future, and trust me, I’ve got a lot of them in the pipeline, with my current work schedule I’ll likely miss the Halloween themed ones, but people still like zombies at Christmas, right? If the benefits of a link-back are more likely to get people to post about my lists I’m okay with that, but I’d like to think that people will only write about something if they think it’s interesting and worth writing about.
T-shirts have a lifespan, they don’t last forever, they stretch, they fade, they get stained, and sometimes the tees stay the same but the owner changes size, or just changes their taste. This got me thinking, “what do you do with a tee when you don’t want to wear it anymore? (and you don’t want to give them to charity for whatever reason)” I’ve got more than 200 t-shirts in my wardrobe (and out of it, and draped on chairs, and stacked in cupboards, and hanging on racks), and they don’t all fit me now, so I thought I’d hunt around and find out what they devil I could do with all those superflous tees. As it turns out, other people have this problem too, and there are loads of tutorials out there with interesting ideas for how to recycle your t-shirts into something ‘new’.
My server has been crushed under the weight of traffic from my list posts in the past, and one way to try and alleviate the strain is to split an article into pages. This first page of 50 tutorials, projects, and videos doesn’t have any unifying theme to it, it’s just a random collection, some of which are pretty unusual ideas. The rest of the pages have been sorted into groups as they are often different takes on the same idea. Page two has 6 tutorials for turning your old tees into a rug or quilt, and 7 ideas for turning t-shirts into bags, often with the idea of using them as shoping bags, which I’m sure would get you a lot of approving looks at Trader Joe’s. The third page is for those of you that want to refresh and recondition your tees so that they’re still a t-shirt(ish), but with a bit of a customized twist to make you stand out from the crowd. Page four sees your tees becoming skirts and dresses, and I was pretty impressed with a lot of the finished articles on that page. The last page has links to books about reconditioning and recycling your t-shirts, so kind of like this list, except in book form. If I’ve missed something from the list, or you’ve had an idea but can’t find it anywhere online, feel free to share that in your comments. If you have enjoyed this list I would very much appreciate it if you could promote this article in some way, be it via tweet, stumble, delicious bookmark, digg, blog post, or envelopes stuffed with cash being posted to me.
31. This instructable isn’t about cutting your tees, but storing them, and whilst I don’t think it would be a good solution for my 200+ tee collection, it might be good for keeping a few of your favourites good-as-new.
On the second page of this article you will find 6 ways to turn your excess tees into a rug or quilt, and 7 tutorials explaining how to turn your tees into bags.
No, you can’t buy this (well, you could, the mockup is of an XS American Apparel 2001 tee), it’s a mockup done by Tom Neal for t-shirt designers to put designs onto so that your mockup looks a bit more realistic. As I don’t design tees I can’t really compre it to other mockups, but the fact that this release includes every colour of tee that AA offer in the pack… well that has to be a good thing. Find the download link at this Emptees Talk thread.
Whilst I was in Berlin for T-Shirt Day it seemed like a great idea to hop on the ICE train (which isn’t as cool as it sounds) and head 100 miles south of the capital to the city of Leipzig to check out Spreadshirt’s much-larger-than-I-expected HQ and production facility. If any of you are wondering, [...]
This cool looking scarf/necklace was featured in Instructable’s weekly newsletter, and I thought it looks no nice (and presumably easy though I haven’t actually looked at the tutorial properly yet) that I’d share it with you, so if you were wondering “what should I do with this old t-shirt?” wonder no more!
Recycled T-shirt Necklace
I’m in two minds as to whether I should make the trip to Leeds for this. On the one hand, I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about his talks, I like the promise of free cupcakes, and I might get to meet the guy after writing about his goods for years (though I don’t [...]
See that t-shirt up there, that is not a t-shirt, that, apparently (and I am skeptical) is a mock up. It was made up (I think) by Jeff Finley from Go Media (you’re probably more aware of their blog if you’re the kind of person that designs rather than hires designers), and I’d really like [...]
Eric Terry, the man behind Linty Fresh (that’s him up there!), held a video webchat on Sunday evening in which he would answer people’s questions about the indie tee industry and share his experiences. With the time difference between the US and UK Eric’s Q&A sessions are on a little late for HYA’s bed time, [...]
I know I’m venturing into unchartered waters here, but I’d like to think that HYA has a duty to help out clothing designers as well as clothing buyers (yes, very much overlapping groups, but you know what I mean), and if it means that I don’t have to post pictures of poorly mocked-up hoodies, then [...]
22. 
