There can never be enough trashy treasures in the world. When craft supplies are free and working double duty to keep landfills free, the urge to make more and more grows. Yet, few crafters realize that free fabric and yarn comes home with every trip to the grocery store. Take stock of your plastic shopping bags and consider "upcycling" them.
The trick is to make "yarn" from the plastic shopping bag. Start cutting a 1/2 inch wide strip from the top of the shopping bag all the way down in a spiral pattern to get the longest single strip possible from each bag. Then, crochet away using any pattern you find for a tote bag.
Interested in making other trash to treasure waterproof items? Simply start stripping your bags into plastic yarn and find a pattern.
When fusing, any ink on the bags will melt off during the process. Place a clear bag on top of the patterned bag when fusing. This keeps the ink from melting into a large mess but allows you to see the design through the clear bag once the stack is fused together.
Now you have plastic "fabric" for any items you want to create. Consider creating place mats. Using real fabric strips, create a frame of fabric around several layers of your plastic bag fabric, folding the fabric under to create an edge. These place mats can be made in whatever sizes you like, and they can be used for children's play mats during crafting.
If crocheting isn't your talent, try sewing the fused plastic bag fabric into a tote bag, a purse, or a lunch bag. Some creative uses for the fused plastic fabric include stitched raincoats and notebook/photo album covers.
For quilters, look at portions of the grocery bags as pieces of quilting fabric. A crazy quilt design made out of fused plastic grocery bags is more than interesting. Create a tablecloth for your patio table out of the waterproof fabric. Consider purchasing a large piece of clear acrylic, creating a fused plastic mosaic design, and framing it behind the acrylic by screwing it to an outside patio wall. Landscape designs can be made from the various colored bags found at the stores.
The options for plastic grocery bag recycling are endless. Turn this environmental threat into something beautiful and relax on the days when your fabric shopping bags are forgotten. Turn trash to treasure and turn negatives into positives with your crafty know how.
This page contains the following solutions.
I worked in the yard this week, and realized a great way to use the bags that mulch or soil come in, is to cut them up and use them as weed blocking plastic.
You can make a leaky or non-waterproof container suitable to use as a vase by using a plastic bag as a liner and filling the bag with water.
Save long skinny plastic bags or tubes of plastic, because they have many uses. I just stapled the folded-over end of a sturdy plastic tube to make an extra eyeglass case and I have used the long skinny bags to hold my flutes/recorders!
Save the reclosable package from lunch meat after a sandwich lunch. Rinse and use to hold the leftover piece of tomato. It will not wilt.
Save those large plastic bags that are delivered to you when you order from UPS delivery service. They are great for lining the outside garbage can.
Check out these photos.
Here is a rug I made in 16 parts from packaging leftover from an insulation job we did. Each part is the size of a standard place mat.
