Upcycle some old T-shirts into something that's pretty and practical. All you need is a hula hoop and you can make your own loom to DIY a fabulous rag rug! 10 to 12 cotton jersey T-shirts Start by cutting off the hemmed bottom of all of the T-shirts. Cut one of the T-shirts into 16 horizontal strips. Stretch the T-shirt strips in pairs around the hula hoop as shown. These strips are known as the weft strips. Cut the rest of the T-shirts into 1-inch horizontal strips. You will need 10 to 12 T-shirts total. Cut off one end of each strip so that the loop becomes a long strip of fabric. Start wrapping the T-shirt strips around the weft strips. Alternate going over and under each weft strip. Treat the weft strip pairs as though they are one piece for now. Secure the strips of fabric in place by tucking them into the weaving on the back side of the rug. After your weaving is approximately eight inches across, separate the weft strip pairs and start weaving through them separately.

Once you are about six inches away from the edge of the hula hoop, separate the weft strips again and start weaving in between the strips, as shown. Cut the weft strips off of the hula hoops. Then, tie the weft strips in a double knot. Weave the ends of the weft strips into the back side of the rug.Wedding Dress Styles 1979 Turn the rug over and it's ready to use!Bathroom Mirrors 72 X 36Find more crafts and DIY projects!Rustic Vinyl Sheet FlooringSign up for A Piece Of Rainbow weekly newsletter!T-shirt is one of the coolest material to make fabric projects. Scarfs, baskets, poufs, and rugs. You can find inspirations everywhere but up till now I thought I will have to use my hook to create anything out of an old t-shirt.

I was wrong and I am happy with that! I know that this tool isn’t something that we all have at home but is not that difficult to buy it nowadays. Hula Hoop Rug may sound crazy but you wouldn’t have to spin it on your hips to weave this colorful rug. For Handimaniac like you it will be a piece of cake I bet, and so fun too. Awesome step by step project, as shown here on Spoonful, waiting for your creativity to burst. If you are not in the mood, take out your boyfriend’s black t-shirts and make this rug gravelly. The happiest person you are, cut your own t-shirts and make it rainbow like. There are many variations and this hoola hoop weaving technique could also do with other kinds of thick yarns. The round shape could also be of different sizes and make a foundation (bottom) for a toy basket that you can crochet later. If it is not too big, two pieces will make two sides of knitted bag...and so on. Upcycle your t-shirts to Hoola Hop Rug or anything else and share it on our facebook.

Support our hard work. We rely on your help. Now tell your friends on Facebook that you like Handimania!Don't show this again. Thanks for a tweet! To stay updated with Handimania articles follow our Twitter profile. Thanks for a pin! To stay updated with Handimania articles follow our Pinterest profile. Only fill in if you are not human Only fill in if you are not humanThe rug was made on a hula hoop loom, using an old t-shirt for the warp and a massively huge ball of finger knitting for the weft. I based this project on an incredible t-shirt hula hoop rug I saw on the Disney Family Fun site, where they used strips of t-shirts for the weft. I’ve been wanting to try it with finger-knitting ever since.  B had completed most of this ball at school during read aloud time so I had no idea what I would find in there. What a joy to see the ball unwind and uncover its hidden textures and colors.  I haven’t done a lot of weaving in my day, but I must say, I think it is very satisfying.

Something about the way it builds on itself snugly and the way it revealed its character with each new stretch of finger-knitting inordinately pleased me. My son’s ball started with four-finger finger-knitting (click here for a how-to) and switched mid-ball to single-finger finger-knitting.  Both kinds of finger-knitting use the same process, though in the latter, the knitting is done on one finger instead of four.  As a result, the strands in his ball became finer at times.  The ball was amazingly varied, ranging in the kind of finger knitting, as well as yarn thicknesses, from super thin to super thick and everything in between.  I was worried about how the variability would affect the end-product, but I love the finger knitting hula hoop rug for that very reason. I think that this project is forgiving overall to the quality and consistency of the finger knitting. I have to say that although this project was easy for the kids to work on, I think the size of it was a bit overwhelming.  

It was a HUGE ball of finger-knitting, which was hard to handle for their little hands.  They tired of doing it after 5 to 10 times around the circle.  I think this project would work better if you did it bit by bit. A large ball of finger-knitting (or, this can be done in stages as you complete littler strands of finger-knitting. This rainbow pack of yarn looks fun!) An old t-shirt (I used a women’s large.  A Hanes t-shirt would work well.) 28″ Hula hoop (here’s one online)  You can’t make a rug much larger than 19″ on this size.  I’m sure it would work on a bigger hula hoop as well. Cut the t-shirt into 10 strips, approximately 1 1/4″ wide across the body of the t-shirt, under the arms. Pull the strips across the hula-hoop in a spoke pattern, going progressively in between the spokes you’ve already added. After adding the 10 strips stretched across the hula-hoop into 20 spokes, you’re ready to start. You need to create an odd number of spokes to make the weaving pattern (over/under) work.  

Do this by pushing two of the spokes together.  Even out the spacing on rest of the spokes across the hula hoop. If you have an extra large ball of finger-knitting, you’ll have to squeeze the ball in between the spokes and re-space them afterwards. Every time you get back to the double spoke, check to make sure you haven’t missed any, you should be doing the opposite (over or under) of what you did on the last round. They quickly got a hang of pulling the ball over and under the warp spokes and noticed quickly if  something got off. We found it easiest to do a bunch of weaving (over/under) in a row, as below, and then to pull the finger-knitting taut (not too tight!), such that it fits snugly against the circle. I think the ball of finger-knitting was made for this hula-hoop, because it fit just perfectly. We wove until the ball was gone! Generally, you want to stop about 4 inches before the edge of the hula hoop. You want the ties to be fairly tight because if the rug starts to loosen, it will start to curl into a bowl.

Continue to cut and tie each spoke as you go around. When you get to the double spoke, cut it, and then .   . . .take one of the pieces of the double spoke and re-weave it over and under some of the finger knitting strands next to it, and then tie.It’s slightly counter-intuitive, but if the rug is curling. Push the weft (finger-knitting) in towards the center of the rug and re-tighten the ties. This way the circumference of the circle is smaller and the strips of finger knitting won’t be pulling as much. You can leave the rug with the ties loose as below. I think this makes a striking center piece. Or, to hide the ties, as in the first photo in this post, I chose the “right” side of the rug, by choosing the side I thought looked the nicest.  I flipped the rug to the “wrong” side, and wove each piece of the tie into the back of the rug. The back of the finger knitting hula hoop rug looks like this with the ties woven in: The front of the rug looked like this: