Ruined t-shirts

I HATE to throw things away (well useful things anyway, I'm not some hoarding garbage monger). I love to sell things on eBay, and I love to donate things to Deseret or Goodwill, and I love to declutter, but t-shirts with stains to me aren't donation quality. Who would want them? They still have a lot of life in them really, but my kids drawers are always overflowing anyway (because people love to give clothes to me) so the stained ones get discarded. Which brings me to this dilemma. As a recycler who can't stand it when I see somebody throw away a perfectly good plastic bottle which they could be recycling, what can I do about all these ruined t-shirts??

Well, I have been fortunate to find a couple good ideas and I'm itching to buy a new sewing machine to try them out. My sewing machine fell off a counter and has some serious damage which I'm not sure is fixable, and it's older and I want one which does some fun stitches. Actually it would be very ideal if I just won one like you can in a giveaway I just found on a beautiful site Handmade Beginnings, here's the link for the giveaway
http://lp.wileypub.com/handmade/indexIE.html

Back to the good ideas for upcycling some old stained t-shirts. These gals are truly gifted!

The Crafty Cave made these beautiful bows and lots of others. Check out her fab tutorial here.

At Second Street is one of my favorite blogs. Read her tutorial here for this adorably wonderful hat that can be made for kids and adults!!

Creative Jewish Mom has this beautiful centerpiece on her blog. I'm not sure if these flowers would come out quite the same in t-shirt material, but I'm thinking of some of the ruffly sleeves and necklines of some of my girls shirts. Wouldn't those be sweet flowers!? Check out her tutorial on these felt flowers here.

Helping Little Hands has a great tutorial on how to make old t-shirts into summer shorts for kids!! Click on the following link to check it out! Helping Little Hands: 25 Minute Upcycled Summer Shorts & Capris (or Pants): Tutorial