I think (hope) everyone knows that plastic grocery bags suck a lot and that paper grocery bags aren’t much better, but did you know that to make all the plastic bags we need in the United States each year we need 20 million barrels of oil?  Gross!  Clearly, reusable bags are the way to go for your groceries.  Just leave them in the trunk of your car so that they’re always ready for a grocery run.  I keep one tucked in my purse as well in case of impromptu purchasing.

Of course you can get reusable bags at pretty much any grocery store, but most of them are pretty ugly and there’s a good chance you have all the things you need to make your own sitting at home already.  By making them yourself, you can recycle (always awesome) and make sure that you don’t look like everyone else at the store when you wheel your groceries out to the parking lot.

This is a great project for reusing old bedsheets or even pillow cases.  If you don’t have any on hand, you can go looking for cute vintage sheets at your local thrift store, or if you want to buy new fabric for the occasion, one of my favorite places to do so is Sew Mama Sew.  If you get a yard of fabric, you should be able to make a couple bags (depending on the width) and with a queen sheet you can make enough for all your groceries with plenty of fabric left over.  In addition to the fabric, the only other things required are a pencil or chalk, scissors, a ruler, an iron, some thread, and a needle.  The project goes a lot faster with a sewing machine, but it’s super easy to hand sew as well.

The bags I make are based on this tutorial from MorsBags:

However, once you’re done, there’s one more step to make it great for groceries.  You want to create a boxed corner for each of the bottom corners, that way the bag will have a flat bottom.  It’s just two more (short) seams, so don’t fret.  You’re almost done!  To box the corners, simply turn your bag inside out and sew a seam that creates a triangle out of the bottom corners.

 It sounds way more confusing than it actually is, but if you still need help, check out Craft Apple’s post for more detailed instructions.

Once you box the corners, you’re done.  Enjoy your cute new bags and saving the earth.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Craftiness, diy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.