Bring those tees back to life
Here at ICON we love t-shirts. But even the most-loved top will wear down over the years. We all have some old t-shirts lying around, but there are lots of ways to bring them back to life. Here are some ideas and inspiration for what to do with the clothing so that it doesn’t end up in landfill.
Wrap skirts
Wrap skirts made with panels of old T’shirts, using a variety of colours and slogans can lead to creative and unsual designs. Also, wrap skirts are one size fits all and super easy to make and wear.
Dresses
Alternatively, smaller panels can be sewn together to make a dress (you can keep the top of a t’shirt for the arms and shoulders).
Rugs
You can make T’shirt ‘yarn’ by cutting T’shirts into strips – wrap around an old bottle or anything in a cylindrical shape. The resulting yarn can has many potential uses – including to weave it into a rug, bath matt, basket or cushion cover.
Necklace
These usual necklaces turn your old t’shirts into statement fashion.
Name tags
Using the text on T’shirts to create newspaper collage style name tags is a nice idea.
Top
Or you can just refashion parts of T’shirt to create a new, perhaps more stylish and flattering top.
Baby clothes
Babies get through so many clothes that creating them from old T’shirts is much more sustainable.
Lampshade
An illuminating idea for old t-shirt yarn!
Bag
Sometimes the messaging on T’shirts carries nostalgic memories for old favourite bands or sports teams. If you don’t want to wear them as T’shirts anymore, repurposing as a bag is a nice way to keep them in your life, while still having a practical use:
Or you can use one T’shirt as a bag by simply cutting the sleeves off and sewing the bottom together.
Quilt
Another nice way to preserve memories is to make a quilt from old T’shirts, especially through the generations.