Hi.
My name is Katie Crooks.
I'm the Public Programs Coordinator for the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American
Art Museum, and today I'm going to show you one of the featured crafts for our upcoming
Handi Hour program.
The craft that I'm going to show you right now is a T-shirt necklace, and I'm wearing
one currently.
It's a very easy project to make, and you only need a few things.
First of all, an old t-shirt, something that you were probably going to donate anyway,
and then you need a ruler, and something to cut with.
You can either use a rotary cutter like this or you can use a scissors.
If you're going to use the rotary cutter, make sure you have a mat down so that you
don't hurt your table surface that you are cutting on.
I'm going to go ahead and just use a scissors.
So go ahead and take your shirt.
You can use any type.
I find that 100% cotton or tissue tees seem to work the best, but it really doesn't matter.
So the first thing that you need to do with your shirt is you need to cut off the hem,
and then you cut off the top of the shirt right under the armpits.
Leave it folded over, so you're cutting through it all at the same time.
There's a label here on the bottom of this shirt, so I'm going to cut the hem kind of
wide so that label comes off with it.
It won't be useful later.
Your cuts don't need to be perfect.
Go ahead and set the hem off to the side.
And then next, cut underneath the armpits.
You'll want to use a shirt that's clean or freshly laundered, but if there's a stain
that's small or unnoticable, it's not a big deal.
You don't want to use a shirt that's overly worn or threadbare because you'll be pulling
on the edges.
So what you're left with is a nice swatch of fabric.
Depending on how wide your fabric is, you might want to cut it into thick strips or
thin strips, but basically, leaving it folded, measure out about what a 1 inch to a 1 1/2
inch strip looks like, and then you're going to go ahead, looking at that, and you're going
to try to make nice even cuts the whole way down the shirt that are about 1 inch apart.
Having a nice, sturdy surface for this is very helpful.
So go through and do that, and as you go, line up your shirt pieces on the side of the
table like so.
Luckily, I've already gone through and cut a whole shirt so you don't have to watch me
do this whole piece right now.
This shirt did not have side seams to it, but the shirt that I had previously cut up
did, so I've matched all the side seems together on either end, like so, and what I'm going
to do now is I'm going to pull it.
So take them and stretch them pretty gently, especially if it's a well-worn shirt you don't
want to tear them, but if you pull them to the point where they start to curl up on each
other, that's exactly what you want.
So go ahead and do that, then twist them into a figure eight, match the hems up at the top,
and there you have the basis for your necklace.
Go ahead and take a scrap left over from the shirt.
You can cut the sleeve or somewhere on the chest that's above the armpits, and you're
just going to wrap it around the top so that you cover up the majority of the hems.
Then once you've done that, take the extra end, tuck it under the fabric, and you're
all set.
Ready to wear.
You'll notice depending on the type of shirt you have-this one here was an A-line undershirt
and it leaves a little bit of shirt behind when you take it off.
One of these shirts without ribs will fit much more cleanly and will have less shedding.