If you've ever thought about home decorating & have visited Pinterest, then the chances are that you've come across t-shirt yarn. There are crochet rugs and baskets, macramé wall-hangings, knitted clutch purses and tote-bags galore. It's enough to get anyone's creative juices flowing. And if you've ever kicked off your shoes and walked about on a crochet t-shirt yarn rug, you'll know just how delightfully squishy and textured it feels underfoot. It's almost therapeutic - it's good stuff.
T-shirt yarn is both strong and hard-wearing, and it comes in an impressively large range of colours and patterns. It's versatile. It can be quite rigid and structural, as in a bowl or a basket, or tough and beautiful, like a floor rug. But the reason that Ministry of Yarn loves t-shirt yarn so much, and the reason that we've decided to begin our eco and socially-responsible range of yarn with it, is because it's recycled from the off-cuts of the t-shirt manufacturing industry.
Have you ever seen some stats on the output of the fashion industry? The world 
now consumes over 800 billion new items each year, a 400% increase than just 2 decades ago (and the population hasn't risen that much!). The USA alone produces more than 11 million tons of textile waste from "used" clothing each year, and Australians are one of the world's biggest consumers of new clothing, per population size. According to Textile Beat, Aussie's buy on average 27kg of new clothing per year, and then bin 23kg per year - that's 85%! And this doesn't even take into account the amount of pollution, water used and leftover fabric from textile manufacturing, before it even hits the shops.
Ministry of Yarn t-shirt yarn, is exclusively made from the off-cuts of t-shirt manufacturing - what's left of the fabric roll, after the t-shirt pattern has been cut out. There are increasingly more suppliers offering brand new t-shirt yarn, purpose cut just for the intention of making yarn strips, but we feel that this is a wasted opportunity and in fact, creates more waste, due to the need to purposely manufacture and dye the fabric just to make the yarn. We promise to only bring you recycled t-shirt yarn, so that every ball you buy, is a ball of fabric that you have literally saved from going into landfill.
Even beyond this, a minimum of $1.00 from every order made goes to help support vulnerable mums and babies in developing countries, through Compassion Australia’s Mum’s and Babies Program. So you can help save the planet, and its people. We think that’s pretty darn special, and we hope that you do to. Thanks for helping us to keep making a difference.
Crochet rug by Inspired by Winnie, tote bag designed by In Stitches Sydney, crochet nesting bowls by Minii & Mee.
