A Bag Made From Plastic Bags!

I am on a spring-cleaning binge.  I'm also in a "let's save the earth by recycling" mindset, so that slows down the cleaning process quite a bit.  I don't want to just throw things into the landfill.  That's why I have a room full of boxes of stuff to sell at a garage sale.  Soon, soon . . . .

So when I looked at the giant bag full of recyclable grocery bags in my pantry, I knew I needed to do something with them.  Sure, I could take them back to the store and put them in that big "recycle your bags here" box, but who knows where they really go from there?  I decided to make something from them.

I've run across pictures and tutorials about making things from "plarn" and I decided to try it.  Plarn is yarn made from plastic bags.  Basically, you cut the bags into strips that you loop together and then use them like yarn and crochet something.  There are tons of tutorials for this process.  Here is one.  

Once you've made your plarn, you have to make something with it.   Most people seem to make bags---like bags you can bring your groceries home in.  I loved the concept--use plastic grocery bags to make a reusable plastic grocery bag!  It's so reductive!

Here's what I made.  

 
I got real fancy and kept the different bags separate.  The bottom half is Wal-Mart bags and the top half is HEB bags.  It seems very sturdy.  I believe you could probably carry a bowling ball in it!  It is smaller than I thought it would turn out, but it is not as scratchy as I thought it would be.

Here's a picture with a 2 pound coffee can inside:

It was an interesting project.  I'm not sure if I'll make another, but it was a good way to get rid of a ton of bags (I probably used at least 50 bags to make this one).  If you are interested in trying it, there are lots of patterns available on the net.  Here is a random one.

Welcome to my blog!  I hope you like my totally generic title.  It will have to do until I come up with something creative.  The generic template will have to do as well until I can get my computer-genius son to help me spiff it up.

As I said in my introduction,  I've been sewing for over 40 years and making costumes for community theater for the past ten years. I've made or adapted literally thousands of costumes over that time. And because we are a "community" theater, we don't have much money, so everything I do is done as cheaply as possible. I thought there might be others out there who could benefit from some of the tricks I've learned to create beautiful, professional-looking costumes on the cheap. I also like to sew things other than costumes, crochet, craft occasionally, and cook when I have time. I'll try to blog about all these things on a semi-regular basis.

I'll be happy to try and answer questions anyone has about any of my projects.  Sometimes I will just post a photo of something I've made with a link to the instructions or inspiration I used.  When I have time, I'll post detailed tutorials for particular projects.  I hope to be able to link my posts to Pinterest and Craftgawker, my two favorite sites for inspiration these days.

Here are a couple of photos of costumes I've made.  These are Captain Hook's coat and vest.

Happy blogging!