A Carpet that tells a story of family and love

You know that stack of onesies, baby clothes, kids clothes, grown-up T-shirts and pyjama trousers and anything else made of cotton jersey that you didn't have the heart to get rid of? Well how about you cut them into stripes and crochet a carpet for your cosy home? It will make a carpet filled with memories that you and your family made....I just love the sentiment of it!  You save hundreds of Euros and it won't be riddled with chemicals and their fumes. With this carpet you won't have to air for weeks before you can enter the room again without getting a headache...

I started making this carpet nearly 2 years ago and it took me about 3 months. Most of this time was spent cutting the material and turn it into balls of jersey yarn. Be warned, it ´s a dusty & fluffy work!  You shouldn't be wearing anything black and then need to rush out while you are rolling up the cut T-Shirt yarn!









What you need:
12mm crochet hook
A lot of old clothes made from jersey (baby onesies, PJ´s, T-shirts, leggings, long johns, vests......the list is near endless....)
A very sharp scissors (otherwise you will go nuts!) A cutting mat and a rotary cutter should work, too.
Basic crochet skills

Start by cutting the jersey cotton into stripes. There are plenty tutorials on You-Tube that explain how to cut up a  T-shirt pretty fast. To a certain point this will work for leggings and PJ bottoms, too. All T-shirt tutorials stop under the armpits and waste the rest, I just kept cutting in a never ending way till the whole shirt ( including Sleeves!) Was turned into one string! The only things discarded were the very thick collars.
The stripes should have a width of roughly 3,5 cm. They do not need to be exact or straight, as the yarn will roll in its sides and you won't notice any errors. Just make sure you do not get too thin as that would tear eventually.

When rolling up the yarn, pull it through your fingers with a little force, the sides will roll in and it will be easier to crochet. Now get started! Make a slip knot. Next, make as many chain stitches until you have roughly 2/3 of the width of your carpet. It will get a good bit wider after adding rows. I had to unravel my first try because it got too wide! Now all you need to do is proceed with single stitches, row after row until your carpet has reached the measurements you would like it to have! It really is this simple!

You can find Videos on You-Tube how to connect the ends of two balls of yarn without having a knot. I tried it, but went back to knots, it worked better for me. In the end I pulled all knots to the bottom side of the carpet so they wouldn't be visible. But they will come up again after a while...

Pros and Cons of a Carpet like this:

Pros: It is incredibly soft, any chemicals will have long been washed out. You will keep pointing at certain rows and say things like " Oh this was my favourite maternity top" and many others similar sentences...

Cons: Dirt falls through and gets caught in between the stitches, it is not an easy clean! Depending on the size washing is no option and it gets very heavy.

I hope you have as much fun creating a similar piece as I had!