A little rip-tearing recycling project

Brent and I are pretty lucky. (Okay, so maybe we've both had some super bad luck in the past, but today we are pretty fortunate.) We both have day jobs at a place full of interesting, creative, talented people. And those people like to share their creative fun with us.

So the other day at my job I learned how to make a rag rug.
(It was really on my lunch hour.)

Here's my rug! And those sheets to the right are the "yarn."

When I heard a co-worker was doing a demonstration of how to crochet rugs from rags, I had to go. It sounded a lot like something I had seen while looking for ways to use the coarser parts of alpaca fleece. There was this pattern online for crocheting a rug from a super-bulky alpaca yarn. I didn't have any of the yarn the pattern needed. But, if I could do the same thing with old fabric, I wanted to try because it looked really pretty.

Making my rug was really easy and for bonus fun I got to tear up sheets! I knew we had some sheets that were unmatched or torn or stained. So I went through our closets and found 3 that I thought would go together. I made tiny cuts every 1 1/2 inches along one edge, then at each cut started to rip the fabric. (Not sure this will work on a knit fabric - these were woven.) There is a simple daisy-chain method of connecting the resulting strips together to make them as long as you want. Then, using a "P" size hook, single crochet in a spiral adding an increase every-so-often. More strips are added as you need until you're done.

Next, I'm going to try to make a rectangular rug - actually 2 since they're free. We need some to match this one in our bathroom. And, why not? I've got more sheets.

Yup, I'm pretty lucky.