T-Shirt Rug? More like T-Shirt Ugh!

Every now and then we get a Pinstrosity Submission that is quite well written and so we just let them do the talking. Today's is one of those. I give you Deirdre and the T-Shirt Ugh Rug. 

Like many pinners, when inspiration strikes, I must act. Crafting has been a big part of my life since I was a child; I haunt the DIY & Crafts category like most women my age spam pics from the Weddings category. I've made some great things thanks to Pinterest, like coasters out of paint swatches and a vest out of an extra-large T-shirt. But today, I'm going to talk about an abomination. Something that I thought would be super cute, but only ended up being really ugly. 

The craft was a circular rug made out of t-shirts using a hula hoop as a loom. Here's what I expected:

The Original Pin

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/hula-hoop-rug-995304/

And this is what I got:

The Pinstrosity

The Chapstick is there to show the size relative to it. Does that look like a rug to you? More like a too tiny dinner table centerpiece or a too large potholder. The directions called for a 33" hula hoop. Upon inspection, the one that I had was only 22" (and it was the biggest one at Walmart. Go figure). I also used the bottom hems of the shirts which made parts of it look extra bulky. You can see in the picture that one of my central yellow pieces was a hem. The directions also said to use a dozen t-shirts, where I only had to use four (though this may be due to the small size of my hula hoop). So now I have eight old t-shirts, boys large from Goodwill that will probably go towards another craft or gather dust at the bottom of my closet. I'm banking on the latter.

I was hoping for this to be a birthday present for my mom. Her bathroom is all decorated in blues and greens-- but this looks way too shabby and looks like a child's craft from the 70s.

Also, to any pinners who have children (I'm 22 years old, a recent college graduate, and spend little time with children): What's up with hula hoops these days? All the ones at Walmart sounded like they had water in them. What happened to the ones with beans in them?

Hey, yeah! Where are the bean hula hoops? Oh well. Another thing to add to the "My childhood was awesome, these poor kids now are missing out" list. Anyway...let's take a look at what we can do to turn this from and Ugh to a Rug. 

• This is one project where size does matter. You really do need a large hula hoop. The instructions at the end say to leave at least 8 inches between your rug and the hula hoop, and if you're already using the 33" hoop, that means your rug is only going to be 17" wide (because you're taking 8" off each side, not 8" off total). That's just under a foot and a half. Now I know the rug in the tutorial looks bigger than that, but you have to remember that the girl holding it is not very big, and she is sitting on a chair. I bet her rug is 2' wide. So this project doesn't make a very large rug to begin with, but then if you use a smaller hula hoop it is really going to start being tiny. 
• Another thing to watch while making this is how tightly you weave the t-shirts. The tutorial says, "As you work, push the weft material toward the center of the hoop and keep it just snug. If you pull the weft tight, the rug will develop lumps or bends." So you want your t-shirt strips snug, but you don't want to pull them tight. The first time I tried anything like this as a kid I pulled them nice and tight and ended up with a lumpy bowl. So get the strips woven in the snugly, but don't pull them tight.