Recycled Art: Weaving with T-Shirt Yarn

 In Recycled Art this week, we talked about recycling textiles.  When we typically think about recycling, it is easy to imagine the things that go into our recycling bin, but there are so many other things we need to think consciously about to recycle. Over 95% of textiles can be recycled, it is up to us to take the steps to do so!  This is important because the equivalent of one dump truck of textiles per second is added to our landfills world-wide. 

The students had some great ideas of how we could recycle textiles, like giving someone else your clothes when you don’t want them anymore, or cutting up old t-shirts to make re-usable paper towels, or even owning less clothing.  We used recycled t-shirts cut up into yarn to weave with for our project this week. 

Most of the students had never done a weaving before, so we started with watching my video on how to weave (watch at your own risk, as the song will get stuck in your head!)

Then they got to work!  These students pick up weaving no problem, and I was so impressed by their strong fingers!

I brought along my large loom (his name is Louie) and he got quite a few more pieces added onto him during this class!  I hope to have enough woven to make a recycled rug soon!

To finish the weavings, students could choose if they wanted it just cut off of their loom or if they would like a recycled colored pencil to hang it from.  These turned out great, and I love how everyone of them is so unique. 

This was my last class with this group of students, and they were so much fun.  They were silly, energetic, and also hard workers.  I truly enjoyed having them for these last four class periods, and hope we meet again at another class!