Reusable Shopping Bags....

I think most of you can tell that I LOVE TO SAVE MONEY! (who doesn't?) I also really LOVE recycling, upcycling, and using things I already have. This tutorial does both. Did you know that some stores will take money off your order when you use your own shopping bags? Some stores will take 5 cents off per bag or offer other rewards (like Smith's offers points that turn into money quarterly).

I'm sure you all have a huge stash of grocery bags under your kitchen sink or stuffed in your laundry room, right? Well, this tutorial will use A LOT of them!

MATERIALS:

A LOT of plastic grocery bags.

Parchment Paper

Iron

Sewing Machine and Thread

Scissors

FUSING GROCERY BAGS:

Preheat Iron. My first tip is start with a LOW heat on your iron, like the SILK setting. If your iron is TOO HOT it will melt the bags into a crazy lump.

Take your plastic grocery bags and cut off the bottom of the bag and the handles. This will give you a plastic loop, now slide your scissors up one side and make a large rectanlge. If you really wanted to be precise you could cut each bag the exact same so that the print match up exactly, I don't really care that much.

Once you have 8 bags cut into large rectangles, sandwich them between two sheets of parchment paper. Place on your ironing board and begin to iron. ALWAYS KEEP YOUR IRON MOVING! or the sheets will melt. and make sure to get the edges. Once the bags begin to fuse it goes rather quickly. Once you notice that bags fusing (not melting), flip the whole thing over and iron the other side.

Remember it is HOT, so let it cool before you handle it too much. Once it is all fused you can sew it on your sewing machine and make your own reusuable shopping bags. I like to straight stitch and then zig-zag stitch my seams so that they can handle some abuse.

This first one I made I patterned after another fabric shopping bad I already had. I am working on a couple of other designs and when I get them finished I will post them. I hope you enjoy trying this out!