Knitting T-shirts into Dishcloths

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I am very passionate about recycling and making sure we don’t waste. As part of my whole green initiative, I have been enjoying making reusable cleaning supplies. I was inspired by these recycled t-shirt dishcloths. I have tons of cotton t-shirts from events and things around… so these seemed perfect.

I found a post on how to cut rags for knitting. I cut a few t-shirts, made balls of rag yarn, and got to knitting.

The rag yarn is thicker, so I used bigger size 10 knitting needles. First, I made one boxy dishcloth knitted pattern (it’s a free download on Ravelry; see my blue dishcloth above). I also made one simple dishcloth in a maroon color. I started by casting on 12. For each row, I repeated knit 2 pearl 2 across. You can make the cloth as big as you want, just cast on in multiples of 4 so that you can k2 p2 across on every row.

(I’ve played around with slip stitches at the beginning and end of rows, but haven’t been able to do it successfully. I got the idea to try it from the Boxy pattern, linked above. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!)

I created a third where I cast on 16, and repeated k2 p2 across. On such a cold day, I’m enjoying knitting on the couch with my kitties.

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I usually crochet spiral sponges to use on the dishes. So I’ve been using these for dusting and wiping down the counters. I love that you can just throw them in the washing machine!  Much better than using paper towels.