Its in the Bag!!! A grocery bag upcycle.

Recently an article ran in our local newspaper discussing the issue of plastic grocery store bags and what a bane they are to the planet.  The article discusses a 10 cent tax on them here in the Matanuska Borough.  You can read it here:  https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/mat-su/2017/08/01/mat-su-will-hear-proposal-to-tax-plastic-shopping-bags/

After my oldest son passed away we had a lot of his clothing (in addition to the SOCKS) to go through so some of my family came to the shop with me to help go through things.  What I wanted to keep or donate or things that needed to wait until I could see them without crying.  One of the people who came to help was Aunt Deanna - she is my aunt by marriage and is younger than either Chad or I.  Its funny how it works.  She asked if she could take some of the T shirts for she and her daughter. 

On my birthday she brought me a couple of these:

They are reusable grocery bags made out of old t shirts!  They are awesome and if you don't have any Im going to show you how to make them.  There are also tutorials on YouTube and on Pinterest as well.  

My son was a welder so a lot of his shirts had slag holes in them, so we had quite a few that were available for use in this instance.  

Start with the sleeves of the shirt and cut them off leaving about 2" on each side of the shoulder seam.

Then do the same at the inside (collar) part of the shirt.  On this one the shirt has words so I just cut down to that level so you can still read the words on it - "harden the F*#k up" it says at the bottom - not a school shirt and it had a big welding slag hole in the back too.  That was one of my sons favorite sayings so I had to keep it.

I discarded the sleeve parts but Im sure there is some use for them - Ill work on that - you know how I hate to throw anything away that might have a great upcycle!

Once the sleeves are cut away, turn the shirt inside out, even out the bottom of the shirt and start making cuts - about the length of your scissors all the way across the shirt through both layers. 

Begin at one edge and tie the layers together like you would tie the first knot of a shoe.

 

After you have gone all the way across start back across the shirt and tie together every other tie - alternate them so that they sort of braid across the bottom.  You may have to make a double knot - I did on this one as the material is a little bit thin and has a slippery finish kind of.

It will look something like this when you are done.  

Turn your bag right side out and you are done!  

These two on top of the one I just made are two that Aunt Deanna made for me.

You can sew them and hem them if it makes you crazy that they have raw edges but it is not necessary.  You can wash them just like you would a t shirt.  If the knots come out you can just tie them back up - easy.

Not only are you saving money but you are working towards a better day on the planet too!  

These are light weight as well and they hold about 4 plastic bags worth of groceries as well - as long as you can carry that much.  

Happy Shopping!