apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Please think before you buy another bag!

Take your old tee shirts that you already have and make them into bags. I have been doing this for the last few weeks as I get my stuff ready for Goodwill and craigslist and now everyone wants me to do one for them.

I use them for packing lunches for work, running errands, sorting laundry - almost anything I would have normally done with a plastic bag.

The best part is, I don't have to throw out or give away on old tee shirt because its time has passed. I now get to wear my "Cutting Crew - On the Road '87" tee shirt proudly on my shoulder, filled with groceries.

While I agree these bags are cute, why not use what you already have?

PS - I never "learned" to sew, and do not own a sewing machine. I sew them by hand with a simple overlock type stitch. They hold up EXTREMELY well and it is very easy, even if you have no previous sewing experience.

hmr - can you link us to a tutorial? I do sew, but am terrible at figuring things out on my own.

Below is the original link I read from Martha:

http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.3a0656639de62ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=37b1b744dd165110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=craftcod_recipe_b

Her instructions are a bit too detailed for my taste. I just sew up the bottom, without pinning it, cut the holes by eyeballing them and then go shopping!

As for my half-baked overlock type stitch, I just put the needle through one side of the lined up bottom hems (while the shirt is inside out), then pull it back over and enter through the same side again... and again... and again... until I am done.

I write a craft column for my local newspaper and wrote a T-shirt-turned-tote-bag tutorial for it a couple months ago, just before our city's big road race where everyone gets a shirt for participating. My bag is lined with a second T-shirt, so it's super strong.
Here's a link to my blog, where I pasted the text of the column. There's also a photo of the finished product.
http://pennycarnival.typepad.com/penny_carnival/2008/04/inch-by-inch.html

Pennycarnival -

I love how your's came out. The bit of edging makes it look so clean!

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, hmr. People stop me all the time when I use it--probably because it's made out of a T-shirt that 50,000 other people in town own (it's a big race). One woman this weekend took a photo of it with her mobile. Seriously, though, it was super easy.

Cute idea, but what about those of us that don't NY? I think I'll take hmr's suggestion and recycle something I already own instead.

I guess it read my brackets as HTML... I was trying to say, what about those of us that don't "heart" NY. I've been there, it's fun, but I don't need its name on anything that I own.

Great, I'm going to do that! Reuse old shirts that is!