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Tutorial: Reusable produce bag from a t-shirt
Sarah from Sadie Seasongoods shows how you can make these reusable produce bags from thrifted t-shirts. Take them with you to the farmer’s market in the coming months to bring home some farm fresh goodies. Or, when the weather turns hot, use it to carry a book and a towel with you to the pool!
Click below for her tutorial:
Thrifted T-Shirt Produce Bags, by Sadie Seasongoods
[photo from Sadie Seasongoods]
I am just smitten with this felt gingerbread house bag. This would make such a sweet special Christmas accessory for a kid. It’s a free pattern at Benzie Design, designed by Gracie from Hello Gracie Makes. It’s packed with adorable gingerbread house details, like swirls and stripes and scallops adoring the doors and windows.
And while all those details might seem like this would be a complicated pattern, it’s actually not. The bag itself is made from felt, which makes finishes edges unnecessary. (All of those scalloped edges are just cut from felt, no edge finishing required.) The strap is super simple, made from rope with knotted ends. And all those details are made with some basic hand embroidery stitches. Sparkle felt makes it extra cute.
The striped scallop roof is actually the top flap of the bag. A magnetic snap makes it a secure closure. The rope straps are attached through felt loops at the side of the bag.
They rate this project as an intermediate level, and it should take about 6 hours to make start to finish. That’s doable for a Saturday project or a couple of evenings. Full color photos step you through the entire process.
The project includes a shopping list for all of your supplies. They’ve got a shop so you can order all of them from Benzie if you like and get exactly the supplies used in the project. I noticed it includes a pair of scallop shears, which makes cutting all the scalloped edges for the roof and around the door a breeze.
Finished dimensions of the little felt gingerbread bag are approximately 6 ½” wide x 7 ½” tall. That’s the perfect size to hold a small book, a small toy, or a notepad and some cute pens.
Go to Benzie Design to get the tutorial and free pattern for the felt gingerbread house bag.
Thanks for sharing! This is great idea, especially right around Earth Day. 🙂
If anyone has too many old t-shirts—even more than they can handle in bag form, thanks to Sadie’s tutorial—I suggest donating some to Morsbags. They’re a charity that takes volunteer-created cloth bags and distributes them in stores to reduce plastic bag usage. Here’s their website: http://www.morsbags.com
They’re fresh in my mind because I recently included their organization in an article about sewing for charities: http://www.sewgal.com/sew-for-charities/
This is an amazing idea to make a reusable bag from a T-shirt, I really like it! I have a lot of old T-shirts, so I’ll make something like that! The tutorial is indeed wonderful!