At Home with Bounty

No-sew projects are a great way to get kids involved with making things from fabric without having to teach them how to use the sewing machine. This project, a shag rug made out of strips of fabric cut from old T-shirts, is a fun way to recycle and repurpose old clothes into something new, functional, and chic. Teens and older kids will be able to make this T-shirt rug on their own, while younger kids will probably need some help cutting the T-shirts and weaving them to form the rug. This rug is a great way to reuse clothes that kids have outgrown and is one of the coolest no-sew projects ever. Adult supervision required.

What You'll Need:

• About a dozen old T-shirts
• An extra-large T-shirt for the base
• Fabric scissors

Instructions:

1. Begin by making the base for your T-shirt shag rug. Use fabric scissors to cut the extra-large T-shirt into a large rectangle.
2. Starting about 1 inch away from the edges of the base, carefully make snips throughout the fabric about 1/2 an inch apart from one another. Keep snipping until the entire base has holes.
3. Cut about a dozen old T-shirts into strips that can be weaved in and out of the holes in the base. A good size for the strips is about 6 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide.
4. The next step is to weave the strips through the holes in the base. This is very simple weaving, so even young kids should be able to get the hang of it, although they might not have the patience to do a lot of it. No-sew projects often take some time to complete. Begin at one corner of the base and thread one strip down through the first hole and up through the second. Take another strip and thread it down through the second hole (yes, the same hole strip 1 just came up through) and up through the third hole. Keep on going until you lose your patience, or the rug is complete--whichever comes first.
5. When you are finished making the rug, you can even out the strips if you wish, although it's not necessary. Just trim the longer strips with the fabric scissors to even them out. Now the rug is complete! Enjoy how it feels under your feet.