After Andy from HYA listed 50 great ways to recycle your old shirts with some awesome examples of other uses of the tee, we thought we’d take the camera around the office to see what we’ve experimented with. Here is a collection of our ideas on the extensive possibilities a shirt offers, other than, of course, wearing it. Now with that “Holiday-Which-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named” soon approaching, you might want to impress with some nifty shirt-recycling gift ideas.
A)Wall Shirt Print
Simple, yet snazzy: personalise a t-shirt in the Designer, order one from your shop or grab one of your own favourite (washed) shirts. Buy or make a frame, span it across and cut accordingly. Add a cardboard, wood or foam (in our case for anti-echo insulation) to the back and staple the shirt ends to the frame. Make sure that the shirt is nice, tight and taut. I would also buy the frame after you have the shirt in your hands to get the sizing right.
Cost: depending on the shirt and frame, around €30.
Effort: Doable in one evening, even for those non-handy types
Look/use: for you to decide. Great eye-catcher and a great way to get rid of echos! We love ‘em!
B) The “Shirtain”
We’ve had this idea rolling around in our noggins for a while: a curtain made completely from shirts. The first try didn’t make it to fruition, as some other priorities got in the way – so that’s why we decided to hand about 50 shirts over to a seamstress.
Cost: depending on the size of the curtain and who does it: 30 shirts + about €100 for the seamstress
Effort: a practiced seamstress needs some room and about 2 days
Look/use: great decoration in the patchwork style, great for keeping the sun out of glassed in offices. Some exposed seams on the back of the curtain might be an eye sore for some.
C) Shirtseat and Shirtthrow-blanket Cover for the Couch
The throw blanket cover for the couch is made just like the curtain (see above). We have wanted to do the shirtseat ever since we saw the rag chair from Droog, found out about its actual price and found a box filled with shirts (wherever would we find these? 
). Our version looks and functions a little more like a footrest, but is pretty easy to make (and still comfortable to sit on!). We took, 60 shirts, two hoodies (for added cushion) and an apron (for the bottom) and layered them all. It’s very important to stack them well. First two next to each other and then two on top of each other. The seat will lose a bit of its height once you have fastened it all together. Once it reached the desired height, we tied it all together with plastic straps (thanks Mr. Postman!). Done!
Cost: about 110 shirts
Effort: About 1 hour for the seat. About 1 day for the throw blanket (depending on your sewing speed).
Look/use: Throw cover is super comfortable and has that patchwork look. It only needs a matching shirt pillow. The shirtseat: just as stable as it looks. A bit too low to sit on for the taller amongst us, but perfect as a footrest; also an eye- and dust catching machine.
Any other creative ideas on how to use shirts?
Ami
Dave
Lovely idea an addition to recycling in a creative way!
You bet – my girlfriend was even inspired by the post to create a pillow case from some of the shirts we don’t wear often
. I’ll update with some photos.