Making Yarn Sorta
If you knit or crochet you know that buying nice yarn is expensive. There is a way that you can get nice yarn though if you are willing to do a little bit of work. And it's a green project too!
You can deconstruct sweaters for yarn and save some money! Here's a few tips for doing this:
1. Avoid Cotton, most cotton sweaters are made from tons of individual threads versus just a single piece of yarn. There's a way to check if its a single piece of yarn or many threads and its really easy.
Just pull a stitch and see if its one strand or many. When you're done, if you pull around where you picked the stitch, it will go flat and you won't be able to tell you pulled it.
Many strands:
One strand:
2. If you are getting any wool/natural fiber sweater, make sure the piece isn't felted. You can also check to see if it is felted by following the method used in #1 to see if there many threads or just one. If it's felted, the yarn fibers are locked together and won't be able to be separated.
3. Save the labels for the yarn so that way you what the yarn is made of and how to care for the whatever you make using the yarn. Save the buttons for future projects!
How to make yarn:
HOW TO:
1. Remove any labels and buttons from the sweater. If you are using a cardigan or a sweater with buttons, use a seam ripper to removed the threads sewn around the buttons holes.
2. Start to take apart the sweater but ripping its seams. If you cut the seam at the top. it should unravel all the way down fairly easily. If you cut the seam at the bottom, you should have to unravel the seam yourself.
3. Pull apart the sweater.
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| A giant mass of yarn |
4. Wind into a ball.
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| It may be hard to tell, but you can get a crazy huge amount of yarn by taking apart a sweater. If you have ever knit a sweater than you know how much yarn one sweater takes. The purple were from this deconstructed vest which was a size small but the cream was a from a large sweater and you can sort of tell that there is more there. PS for reference, the cream ball is the size of my HEAD! |
Good Luck and enjoy!
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