Fleece yarn is great for fluffy, chunky knitting
I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner. I have GIANT piles of leftover fleece.
Making Fleece Yarn
Find the Stretch
Pull your fleece pieces. Figure out which direction of your fleece is the stretchy direction, then fold along the dotted line as shown below for really stretchy yarn. Fold the opposite way for really sturdy fleece yarn.:
Grab the Shears
Using your favorite rotary blade
Then, open it up and clip every other edge as in the diagram below. You should end up with one long fabric strip. If you clip in the wrong spot, you get multiple strips. Don’t worry if you make that mistake; just use the joining instructions found later on in this tutorial.
Trim the Turns
Next, trim the corners off of each turn, so you don’t have big, wacky chunks in your fleece yarn. you may want to practice with a smaller scrap to find the right trim distance for your particular fabric. Fleece is bad to overstretch in thin spots.:
Then, roll it up into a ball.
Joining to Make it Longer
If you have multiple pieces of fleece to join, put a TINY slit in end of yarn piece…much smaller than shown below. If you make the slit too large, the yarn gets too skinny when you pull it taut.
Next, thread strip 2 through the slit in strip 1 and pull its (2’s) tail through its own slit. (Like when your connecting elastic bands together.) Check out this post for a good picture of it.
Finally, get our your needles and knit or crochet with your own chunky fleece yarn!
WOW!!! I have so many remnants of fleece just sitting around. I would have never thought of this! thank you so very much for sharing!! Now, to start gathering them up : )
Blessings~
Amanda
This is the same technique I use to cut fabric for weaving rag rugs. You can also knit/crochet regular fabric in the same manner shown.
This is the way I recycled all those old cotton t-shirts I didn’t wear any more. They are now a crocheted round rug in my laundry room.
I already knew how to do this…I think it’s a great thing to know how to do though so sharing it was a very good idea!
Aha!! Now I know what to do with all of our old clothes that aren’t donation worthy! Thank you so much!!
Thanks so much for the idea. I remember my grandmother using an assortment of old rags and clothing to make rugs and we always liked them.
Just a note, you can also crochet with plastic shopping bags cut into strips, usually 1/2″ to 1″ works best, or even old cassette tapes. It’s a great way to recycle all those old, outdated or otherwise disposable items!
Never thought of using fleece, great idea!!!
Great easy tutorial
Love this, I never thought of it!
If you have an overlocker/serger, you can sew your fabric into a tube, with the stretch running parallel with the open edges. Remove the needles from your machine and cut a continuous strip round and round the fabric tube. Or round and round the body of the T shirt. If you have a yarn ball winder you can zoom along, winding neat balls of your stretchy yarn as you go.
Fast and FUN!
I am cutting fleece into 5″ widths to make arm knit blanket. I left 5″ at the top unfolded edge but when I got the yarn strip the turns even trimming some off are still sticking out ugly . What should I do? Cut more at turns? Make the 5″ at the top smaller? OR WHAT? Please help I am trying to make a retirement blanket for my husband.
Can you shoot me a picture? ivorysoap at gmail dot com
Oh my goodness. Now I remember. My grandma used to do this. As kids we use to help her and have so much fun. Great instructions.
CV–Do you remember what she did with it once it was turned into yarn?
Using 1/2″ strips of fleece what size crochet hook do you suggest?
Thank you
Something chunky, like S??