A great idea for making a personalized shopping bag
We can never have too many bags, we use ours for everything, to go to the market or the supermarket, when we go to the swimming pool, for trips… I also give them to my friends when they come home them with leftover cake or other things that need to be carried in a bag. I’m always happy to do it, because I know they’ll reuse it, the pleasures of recycling.
You can usually find an inexpensive reusable grocery bag at the grocery store where you restock your groceries, but all those bags often seem sorely lacking in an “emotional factor.” It’s always nice to have an original or fun bag, so I’m happy to present this tutorial to make a tote with an old t-shirt. Best of all… Because it requires no sewing!
Tutorial to make a tote with a t-shirt
Here’s how we made ours:
To make this bag, we will need
- 1 old t-shirt
- …and scissors
Tips on choosing a t-shirt : If you want a deep bag, choose a large t-shirt size goes without saying, but focus even more on quality; T-shirts that are too thin might not be strong enough to carry large groceries to the market. If you want the handles to be longer, choose a T-shirt with wide armholes / or a large size. You can also achieve this with a smaller size shirt by extending the cuts well past the lines where the sleeves attach to the shirt.
Step 1 – Lay out t-shirt on a flat surface and try to remove as many creases as possible before you start cutting anything.
2nd step – Cut the sleeves of the t-shirt by cutting both the front and the back.
Step 3 – Cut the neckline of the t-shirt always on both sides. Cut the hem at the Bottom of the t-shirt so that it is straight (at this point you can adjust the depth… but allow a little more for the fasteners – see below).
Step 4 – Make slits on the bottom of the T-shirt. Cut them so that they are about 2.5 cm wide and 7 to 10 cm high. I used the length of my scissor blades as a guide. Be sure to cut slits on the sides, so as to separate the front from the back.
Step 5 – Turn the t-shirt inside out and start tying the strips together. Tie a front Strip with the corresponding back strip. Tie all the strips in this way. (Don’t worry, you won’t look like an old rocker, the franks won’t be visible once the t-shirt is turned inside out)
Step 6 – The previous step of the bottom of the bag “closed”, but if you turn it right side up, you will find small holes in the bottom of the bag between each tied strip. To close these holes, attach the problematic tied tape to the tied tape next to it. Pull hard on the knot to secure.
Step 7 – Turn the bag right side out so the fringes are tucked inside the bottom of the bag. The background should now look like the photo below:
