Creative Repurposing: How to Make Art from Old Sports Jerseys

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• Video Instructions

If your kid or kids are the sporty type, then you’ll know what it’s like to have sports jerseys all over the place. Once that part of their lives is over, though, what do you do with all the clothing? Instead of letting it pile up and take up space, you can actually repurpose them to make some interesting little keepsakes—like a canvas “painting”—so that you can preserve the memories in a creative manner. These could also make excellent gifts for your kids, especially once they move into their own dorm rooms in college and want to fill their bare walls.

Video Instructions

Video by The Goodwill Gal YouTuber.

Supplies:

• A canvas
• Heavy-duty stapler
• Scissors
• Pliers

Method:

• Slip the jersey over the canvas and position it accordingly.
• Snip off the sleeves, neckline, and back part (or front – whichever you won’t be displaying), but leave at least 2 inches of fabric around the sides that you will staple to the back of the canvas.
• Wrap the fabric around the back wood part of the canvas and get stapling – start at the top, then pull the jersey tight and straight and staple the bottom; do the same for the sides. You can use the pliers to remove a staple if anything goes wrong.
• Cut off the excess fabric.
• For the corner, neatly tuck one piece of fabric under the other piece and staple it in place – repeat for each corner.

See, it’s not all that difficult to make your own wall art, after all! If your sporty child was involved in many seasons, you could write the team name and year on the back of the canvas so that the specifics are remembered forever. And, of course, this crafty little artwork isn’t limited to just sports jerseys, if you have any much-loved t-shirts that no longer fit, like from a concert, you can apply the very same method to remind you of those fun memories. If you’re more about the photos than you are the mementos (we’re not all hoarders, are we?), then play around with some interesting ways to display photos rather than the traditional frames-in-a-line.