Cut around the neck and the sleeves and then cut the bottom off according to how deep you want the bag. The shoulders of the T shirt will be your handles.
Snip off the corners at the bottom of the T shirt.
Now you will make a gusset so that the bag will have a bottom to it. This one is 2 1/4 inches. Spread your seam allowance, measure 2 1/4 inches from the corner.
Pin in place and draw a line that you will stitch.
Stitch this line and snip off the seam allowance.
Here is what the bottom of your bag now looks like.
And here is your finished, recycled, repurposed shopping bag.
So one of the badges I am in the process of earning on Mary Jane's farmgirls is "Going green". I think this falls into "Shopping green." Now I have not been a big advocate of going green. This does not mean I am opposed to it. I am rethinking alot of the waste and footprints I am leaving behind. I do still have some plastic water bottles, but it is mainly just for convenience because I have a water purifier, and I have used it for over 10 years. I must say though that if I still had babies in diapers, I don't know if I could make the switch to cloth diapers. I tried that and did not like it. However, I have heard that major improvements have been made since I was diapering my children. But back to shopping green. I saw on the Mary Jane website a farmgirl sister (Ruby Slider) had made several grocery bags out of T-shirts. When I was working on my ds's bathroom, I noticed that he had cleaned out his closet. I took the good shirts to either Goodwill or the resale shop (let me get some of my money back for all the paint I bought). But the T-shirts were to be cut up and used as rags. Yes... I am continually trying to recycle, reuse, and repurpose. So thank you Ruby for this excellent tutorial on making these shopping bags. Ruby says that they work well even with canned goods. I just cut out my first one and I am going to make it all the way through before I "tweak" it... you know.... how deep I want it, if my T shirts are too big, etc. How about you? I know you all have those old T shirts lying around. Also... in weeks to come I will show you the T shirt quilt I am presently working on for my ds.
2 comments:
This is such a great re-purposing of a t-shirt .. I'm going to make a few bags like this.
I saw on a friends blog that she uses her son's old t's to make braided rugs.
Send me that site Mrs. Mac. I have lots of old T shirts. A braided rug out of T shirts would be something I would like to try. Was it made with a crochet hook?
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