T-Shirt Shag Rug

After all the years I have been getting t-shirts from sports, clubs, 5K runs, and other exciting events, I realized that I have a tons of t-shirts, a creative personality, and only one closet. The solution: a DIY t-shirt shag rug. It requires no sewing and is pretty simple to make.

Supplies:
T-shirts (any colors)
Rug canvas (find at your local craft store, I went to Joann Fabrics)
Regular scissors
Fabric scissors or Rotary cutter
Cutting mat and ruler

For the Base (you won't need these supplies until you completed the rug )
Rug lining or thick non-slip material for the bottom
Hot glue gun with glue sticks
Binder clips 

1. Measure and cut the rug canvas to the size you want your t-shirt shag rug to be.

2. Start making the t-shirt pieces for the rug by using your rotary tools (cutter, mat & ruler) and cut t-shirts into 4-in by 1-in strips.   

Tip: I first cut the shirt collar off and the seams, then used my ruler to make same-size strips. Also, some print and logos on shirts are sometimes hard to knot, so be sure to discard those parts of the shirt (along with the seams, tags, etc.)

3. After you have a good amount of t-shirt strips you can start making the rug. It's really simple. Take a t-shirt strip, loop one end under and pull it up and then tie a knot. See picture below.

 4. Now repeat step 3 over and over until you are finished. For my shag rug, I knotted t-shirt strips in every other square and skipped a line after every row. You can also cut the squares so you have bigger holes or make knots in every square. It depends on how full you want your shag rug to be so experiment.

-Also if you run out of t-shirts, feel free to pause on making knots and cut more t-shirts into strips. (Don't worry, I had plenty of times where I ran out of a color and/or needed to cut more strips.)

5. After you completed your rug canvas, the next part is the base. Cut the base material to the size of your shag rug with an additional 1-in border. (So if you were to put your shag rug on top of the base, there would be a 1-in picture frame-like border.)

6. Plug in the hot glue gun, and get your binder clips ready. Place your shag rug on top of the lining and center it in the middle so there is an even border on all sides. Start on one side of the rug and fold in the base material under the rug. Hot glue the folded over piece and rug together, hold those pieces firmly together, then binder clip that section.

7. Work your way around the rug, hot gluing the rug and base together and clipping those pieces together. Let the glue set for a couple of hours. Then, take the binder clips off and go around the shag rug one more time and hot glue any sections that need a little more support and binder clip those ones again.

8. Finally, take all the binder clips off and remove excess hot glue from the shag rug edges.

And there you have it, a pretty cool T-Shirt Shag Rug!