Saturday, January 23, 2010

20 items made from 4 t-shirts

Yesterday I watched a video on Fake Plastic Fish's blog. She had filmed someone showing how you can make 5 or 6 produce bags out of a single t-shirt. I was inspired.

I had 4 t-shirts that I wanted to craft with today. Three of them I made tarn / t-shirt yarn out of. These will be used in my tarn rug.

Then I made 1 large, 2 medium, and 9 small drawstring bags. All of the small bags were made out of t-shirt sleeves. The purple sleeves were shaped funny, so I sewed the 2 sleeves together. I then made 3 bags out of it. Two of the bags can hold a piece of jewelry (gift bag). The larger bags were made from the bottom half of the shirts (below the armpits). The purple ones were made by cutting that section in half. The bottom of the shirts became the top of the bags, because of the already finished hem.

These may seem like folded shirts, but they are all small bags. These were the top half of the shirts with the sleeves cut off. I hemmed the sides first. Then I sewed 3 of the sides together, leaving a 3" gap at the top 2 sides. These are the handles.

This is the smallest of the 5 bags. This is one way to carry an object in it. It would be good for vegetables that you only buy one or two of.

Here it is open. I'm looking forward to taking my new produce bags to the grocery store. Now I have enough reusable produce bags that I don't need to use the plastic ones again. You can also use them as grab bags for crafting on the go.

3 comments:

  1. Kristy,
    All your recycled t-shirt totes turned out nicely and I love them all! Your drawstring bags could be used as gift wrap for birthdays or Christmas too. I've seen something similiar used for gift wrapping and then the bags can simply be reused by the recipent either for their gift-giving or as a ditty bag. I hope you post some of these pictures over on the Everything T-shirt thread so everyone can see your cool creations.

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  2. I was excited to see that post on Fake Plastic Fish too. Now I know what to make with the unused sleeves from my Tshirt yarn projects!

    Love how your bags turned out! I'm going to follow suit with my scraps :0)

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  3. Thanks ladies :) I wasn't sure about posting the pictures in 2 threads, but I will (on ravelry). The tiny purple bags are perfect for giving jewelry in. The other small bags would even be good to hold school snacks in. You are right Cindy, they do make good gift bags. I have given a gift once in a t-shirt bag (the Martha Stewart style tote). Christi, I was stumped on what to make with the sleeves to. I have used the sleeves to make pockets before. So now there are at least 2 uses for them ;)

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