MOPS Monday- T-Shirt Scarves Craft

For our first meeting of 2012, we had a swap meet. Anyone could bring baby or maternity-related item, such as clothes, toys, baby gear, etc. and then anyone could take what they want from the items brought. There was no obligation, though. You could take even if you didn't bring, and it didn't have to be an even exchange. Anything that was left over will be donated to the Lane Pregnancy Support Center. So, while discussing ideas for our craft project that meeting, the idea of "out with the old and in with the new" was mentioned. I went over several ideas (mostly inspired by Pinterest) and settled on the idea of making t-shirt scarves. I browsed the internet and came across several variations and many, many tutorials. I gleaned inspiration from many sources and combined ideas from each to create my favorite aspects of them all, but I will link to the main tutorials I used. I, specifically, only used tutorials for no-sew scarves since it'd be hard to use sewing machines at our MOPS group, and not very many people are good at sewing.

For the first one, I made this scarf:

I was inspired by this blog and this scarf on etsy.

 

I didn't intend to use all of the same colors as these since I looked at tons of examples, but now that I post them together, I see how similar they are. I have a few differences, though. For one, I didn't bind both ends of the scarf separately. I thought that seemed a little odd if you were just going to loop it around your neck twice anyway. If you didn't loop it twice, then the binding on the other side might seem out of place. So, instead, I looped the scarf around and bound them both at once. (That's not very clear in the picture, since it's behind the hanger.) I also did make a flower like the one pictured just by googling fabric flower tutorials, and I didn't like the way it turned out it as much. So I tried one like this:

 

and didn't like it either. So, I went back to the kind I normally make, which is like this: 

I got that tutorial from Pinterest, but the site the picture is linked to no longer works. You can get all of the details from the picture, though. It's SO EASY and pretty much fail-proof! I like my flowers bigger than the 5x5, though, and usually make them 8x8 since that's the biggest I can get from one sheet of felt. I just used a safety pin to attach the flower and it's pretty well hidden. But if I were going to wear this regularly, I'd find a neater way of attaching it.

The 2nd scarf I made was this one:

  

I first had it as one really long scarf and looped it around the neck 2-3 times. The ends seemed too "scrawny", though, compared to how bulky the neck part was. So, then I folded the scarf in half to see if that looked better. It did, but I didn't like one end open and the other closed. Finally, I decided that it may look best as an infinity scarf, so I removed the end loop and attached the beginning and end together instead. Then I looped it around the neck twice. I, personally, like this variation the most. 

I was inspired by this blog:

They used Auburn colors and t-shirts to make their scarf, so I, naturally, carried that over to make an Oregon Duck scarf myself. I do, of course, live in the city of the Ducks and we are now Rose Bowl Champions. So, it seemed like a perfect thing to do. They used 32 rings made from 4 different shirts. Since I only wanted to use yellow and green, I did each one 16 times. I'm not sure if I did anything else differently from the tutorial, but I was a little disappointed at how flimsy my scarf appeared. I guess in pictures it doesn't look that much different, but it wasn't my favorite.

Finally, I made this scarf, which is the one I was most excited about and is my favorite style: 

I used this blog for inspiration and while I loved ALL of her colors and flowers, I chose this one as my main source:

This is the same blog I got the felt flower tutorial from earlier, but since I didn't like how mine turned out, I used the same flower as the first scarf, just in a different color. I really wanted to do it in grey, black, or white with my scarf, but I happened to be out of all of those colors. So, I used a baby blue instead. I also tried a variety of different width spirals, so I had some strands longer/shorter than others. This was because I had no idea how long it would come out. I also used a 12" plate rather than a 9" one and I used a 2X shirt, still coming up with 10 circles. I did notice that the middle of your spiral curls more nicely than the outside, so I tried to turn some strands one way and the others the other way to make it full on both sides. And, if one strand hung down too long, I just trimmed it accordingly. I then used the hem of the t-shirt to tie the scarf together below my neck, and then I attached my flower to the tie with a safety pin. I was really nervous about how much other people would like these. They seem so popular and trendy online, but how would it translate to real life? And it wasn't very helpful when I modeled them for my husband and his response was, "Eh..". But he's a guy. So what does he know? I was thrilled when I wore the white ruffle scarf to our steering meeting and was instantly greeted by one of the girls saying, "You look so cute! I love your scarf!" I replied, "Yay! I'm so glad you like it because this is our craft project this week!" And the girls seemed overall impressed that it was made from t-shirts. 

My next dilemma was how to do this cost-effectively. Who knew that new plain t-shirts were so expensive? Well, expensive relative to my TINY budget! I can spend about $50 on average per craft project and must plan for about 25 people. That's $2 per person. However, I was unable to find any shirts for less than $3.33 a piece. At Joann's, I found the shirts that they use for appliques and painting at 3/$10. This would be around $80 for all of the shirts I need, and even with a 10% off coupon, I'd still be WAY over budget. At Michael's, these same shirts were $3.99 each. I even tried Value Village, a local thrift store for used shirts, and struggled to find ones cheaper than $5. REALLY?!?! And those were stained or dingy looking. This was after looking at Target too, where all of their shirts were $5-12. If you were only going to make your own, this would be fine. But in the quantity I need to purchase, it just wouldn't work. My last idea was to check out WalMart, where I was able to get a package of men's shirts with 4 shirts for ~$10. That made them just over $2/ea.  When I brought up the issue to the steering committee, they suggested that each of them bring 3-4 shirts from home. With 8 steering members, that'd be 24+ shirts. We also announced it on facebook and asked members to bring any shirts they had from home as well. Then I bought one package of the shirts from WalMart to cover any extra members or if people forgot. 

We had our meeting last Thursday. The swap seemed to go over well. There were lots of items brought, and I think lots left over. I was happy to clear out a large portion of toys from my over-crowded house too! Not everyone participated in the t-shirt scarf craft. I'm not sure if the people who didn't participate are just not interested in crafts in general, not interested in this particular scarf, or if they were just busy with the swap meet instead. For those who did participate, I had excellent feedback. One girl did the ruffle scarf and used a t-shirt with a large graphic on the chest. I wasn't sure how this would work out because of the stretching, but it actually turned out really cool. With that particular style, you don't stretch it much, so the graphic wasn't distorted or broken but added cool pops of color through the scarf. It seemed like the felt flower was the most popular aspect of the entire craft too, just from watching people's reactions and seeing their excitement. I think that they loved how forgiving it was, how simple, and that it looked really great in the end even in their imperfections. Because not everyone participated, there were lots leftover. I left them in our craft closet for future use after telling everyone that they could take home extras to try other styles and colors too.

If you try this craft, on your own or at MOPS, please let me how it worked for you. I'd love to hear what worked and what didn't or any advice for making it better in the future!