Turning old t-shirts into rags or tote bags

What it is

Cotton jersey, the fabric of a t-shirt, has one brilliant property for crafting: cut it and the edges curl rather than fray badly, which means a t-shirt can become a tote bag or a stack of rags with almost no sewing and no hemming at all.

Turning old t-shirts into rags or tote bags means giving worn-out, stained, or outgrown t-shirts a second life: cutting them into cleaning cloths and rags, or transforming them into reusable shopping bags, produce bags, and even yarn for knitting and weaving. It is upcycling at its simplest and most useful, taking a garment too worn to wear or donate and turning it into something genuinely practical around the home.

The two main routes need different amounts of effort, both low. For rags, you simply cut the shirt into squares, and because jersey does not fray destructively, the edges need no finishing, giving you soft, absorbent, lint-light cloths perfect for cleaning, dusting, and wiping up spills, far better than paper towel and free. For a no-sew tote bag, the classic method is to cut off the sleeves and widen the neckline to form the bag's opening and handles, then cut a fringe along the bottom hem and tie the strips together in pairs to close it, producing a stretchy, surprisingly strong bag in about ten minutes with only scissors. T-shirt 'yarn', made by cutting a shirt into one continuous spiral strip, can be knitted or crocheted into rugs, baskets, and bags, turning several old shirts into a substantial new object. A genuinely worn-out cotton t-shirt that no charity shop would take still has real use left in it, and these projects capture it.