Practical Craft: My Recycled Farmers Market Bag
bag made from melted bags
It’s the bag to end all bags. You take bags, see? And you use them to make a bag that then replaces the bags. It’s the circle of life really.
There was an entry –Â I think it was on the Make blog — a few months ago describing how to melt plastic grocery bags together into a Tyvek-like super-fabric. That sounded like a cool project so I’ve been saving grocery bags toward trying out the method. Then, this month, Craft magazine published a little how-to on it reminding me that I’d formulated this plan to make a produce bag for my trips to the farmers market out of used grocery bags. This weekend, it rained, giving birth to craft time. I didn’t start with a pattern, but sort of melted-by-ear. The bag ended up being about 14″ x 22″ by 4″. Here’s how to make your own recycled bag bag.
Get your materials together:
about 30 plastic grocery bags (the ones with recycle number 2 on them)
pair of scissors
iron
3 or so magazines
hard surface like a coffee table
few sheets of paper
beverage
Get a pile of bags ready: Flatten a bag with the pleats tucked in, and then cut off the handles and the seam at the bottom. Make a whole pile like this. (I saved the handle pieces because I found they made good patches.)
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Open the bags: Stretch the bags out into kind of double-ply tubes.
Set up your work area: Lay down a few magazines then put a few sheets of paper on top of them. The paper will keep the plastic from sticking to the magazines. Turn your iron on “cotton.”
Make your peace with wrinkles: Lay out a few bags in an overlapping layer. Here, the home depot bag is laying over the safeway bag in the shape of an “L.”
Get prepped for ironing: Lay a piece of paper on top of the overlapping bags (in this case, the intersection of the “L”) to keep the iron from sticking to the plastic. (Stinky fumes. Ruined iron. Bad.)
Iron away: You’ll get a feel for how much heat and pressure do the job. You’ll need more of both as you make the layers thicker. You may initially apply too much heat and create holes in your plastic. No problem. Just melt another layer (or patch) over the holes.
Once you’ve gotten things good and hot, sit back and wait for the tell-tale crackling sound of the paper pulling away from the plastic. That sound means it’s cool enough to easily pull back the paper and add more layers of plastic.
Voila: After adding more layers to increase thickness and length/width you’ll have a sheet. (Thickness is up to you. You can make it super thick like cardstock.)
Make more pieces: Melt together additional panels for the sides and bottom of the bag.
Fuse!: When I first started this I expected to sew the panels together as I’ve done with Tyvek but then I realized, I could melt them together!
Rough seams: For the remaining main panel and seams, I didn’t worry about neatness. I just pinched the edges together and melted. So some of the outside seams look like inside seams. We call that gonzo craft!
Straps: Fold a bag in half. Then keep folding it in half until you have a strip. Cover it with a piece of paper and iron it to melt the strip to itself. Depending on your desired strap-length, you might want to make a couple of these and melt them end to end.
Attach the straps: Doing one side at a time, put about 2 inches of the end of a strap against one side of the inside of the bag. Melt the strap to the bag. Repeat for all the strap ends. Don’t forget to put paper below your bag and between the plastic and your iron. There you have it: a bag! This one will hold at least 13lbs per my test case (our huge cat).
Cool cool cool cool COOL! I came over here today looking for a gift idea and I saw this and thought – ooh, what site is this from? how much I wonder?
“PRETTY!!!”
I love this. I have a huge bag of bags that I hate to throw away and was about to, so you saved my landfill. Thanks so much!
Thanks! It’s so hard to find uses for plastic bags, and so many of the re-uses I’ve seen involve weaving them together, which seems elaborate. The Ready Made book has a how to on making a messanger bag from old newspaper bags, but I didn’t know regular old plastic bags would be so sturdy.
I LOVE this! I am SOOOOO making this and an entire new wardrobe for myself. Thanks for the fabulous show and tell! Sonja
Does it work with all plastic bags? The distinction I make is between the crinkly ones you get at, say, Ikea, and the stretchy-type ones from Target.
ah good question one eyed daruma! you need to use the bags with recycle number 2 on them. So yes, the crinkly ones you get from the grocery store are the ones you need. The stretchy ones like those from target won’t work. Thanks for bringing this up! I added it to the instructions.
so incredibly awesome! i am gonna make a brazillion of these and freak my family out when their birthday presents are inside these bags instead of the frilly “gift bags” that either get immediately tossed or reused so many times that we know who is giving the gift without seeing the card.
thanks for the terrific idea.
You make Al proud!
I was actually thinking these might make good gift bags! Let me know how they turn out hello.
Hi Everyone,
During the week leading up to Earth Week, I taught classes at the High School how to make these bags! They each made one, than the local grocery store displayed them by hanging them from the ceiling to promote reuse and reducing plastic bag usage!!! AWESOME. Thank you so much for the incredible instructions and idea! The kids really embraced the idea of not letting these pesky horrible pieces of plastic end up in our landfill.
right on Erin! I love that you did that! It’s so hard to get teenagers motivated about anything so it’s cool that you had some success witht this.
cheers!
I found a link to this page today, and spent the afternoon making my own bag bag. Here it is. Such a neat project, thanks!
oooh RevDahlia i love the elephant!!
For the bags that don’t melt good, you can still find uses for them. For instance, you can cut the handles and bottom seam off cut them into strips and tie the ends together and crochet a bag like that.
Thanks for these brilliant instructions. Up until now, I’ve been doing this with small gift bags and sealing the gift inside, which pleases me no end, as I can never find the stickytape. But I’ve yet to make a big one, so I’m off to try it out now.
You’re so awesome!
I love the idea!!
I have been looking for a way to dispose of the plastic bags that the newspaper comes in, so this is just great!
Also, If you ever get oranges in those bags that have mesh in the back and are not recyclable or good for anything, then use them for this project and it’ll render really sturdy bags.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to post this.
barb
I love this idea and intend to try it! Trying to get people at our church to reduce… BTW – please do NOT throw these bags away…. most are recyclable… Walmart has a recycle bin for them. (it’s the only reason i would enter a walmart) Please check it out.
i got the plastic liners that are in the tortilla package and melded them together
i put silver stars, green plastic shredding, and purple shredding between and melted
it is so pretty
thanks for these instructions
Is the finished product supposed to have that crinkle sound?
yes it will still have that crinkle sound…you’re basically making heavy-duty plastic…so it will still act and sound like plastic
I have been planning to make a bag like this for about a year- have my plastic cut but just need to do the ironing bit. I just wanted to add a couple of notes to your instructions:
Yes, the stretchy kind of bags you get at Target can work too- other sites doing similar projects have used those and even like them because they are more sturdy. But since they are a different quality plastic than the kind shown here you may not want to mix them together- do a Safeway bag, and a Target bag separately or something.
The other thing to remember is to be sure you do this somewhere with tons of ventilation. Open all the windows in the room you’re working on, blow a fan, or do it outside; treat it as you would painting a room with really smelly paint. When you melt this plastic it releases lots of nasty toxic fumes so you want to avoid doing it around children or in an enclosed space!
That is great creation ,very cool!