When Lydia Johnston’s mom, Sherri Johnston, showed her an idea from Disney’s Family Fun magazine for a 4-H craft project, the 11-year-old wasn’t sold on it.

Take a hula hoop and a bunch of old T-shirts and turn them into a rug?

“At first I didn’t think it was going to be anything great,” Lydia said. “When I started doing it, I thought it was really cool.”

Apparently, so did the judges for the LaGrange County 4-H Fair. Lydia won a blue ribbon for her rug, which was entered in the arts and crafts category but could easily have been entered in the recycling category, too.

Now the sixth-grader-to-be at Prairie Heights Middle School has the entrepreneurial bug.

“I want to start a business,” she said.

The blue ribbon T-shirt rug will soon be occupying space by the swimming pool. After all, she has about four to five hours of labor in the rug (which isn’t too bad).

To get going, Lydia and her mom went to area thrift shops to buy discarded T-shirts (that’s where the recycling comes in). Then, they followed the directions provided in the magazine, which can be found here: familyfun.go.com/crafts/hula-hoop-rug-995304.

The labor included cutting the T-shirt that is first attached to the hula hoop into 11 loops. While the directions in the magazine said a boy’s size large T-shirt works best, Lydia said she found a ladies’ extra-large to be best.

After the 11 loops were attached to the hoop, she began weaving until the rug was done.

When the rug was completed, Lydia had used seven T-shirts to finish it.

And, when she won the blue ribbon?

“I felt really good,” she said. “I was proud because it took forever.”

If that’s forever, she can come complete some of my projects!