My first sewing project: Recycled T-Shirt Bags

I few weeks ago I finished my first sewing project. I learned three things.

#1 Sewing is harder than it looks, but it can be fun.

#2 Pinning is very important and I hate pinning.

#3 Stitching in a straight line is a learned skill, and I haven’t learned it yet.

I got the bright idea to do something with a bunch of old T-shirts we had lying around the house. They seemed too nice just to cut up into rags, but they also weren’t being worn. Plus many of them had sentimental value. So I found information online about making T-shirts into bags. I figured if I screwed it up it wouldn’t matter, given that these are old shirts.

Six shirts later I realized how much I really have to learn about sewing. The pinning process seemed to take forever and I’m not good with slow tedious prep work. I’m the kind of person who loves to paint, but hates prepping the wall before hand, even though I know good prep work makes a project turn out better.

The final product isn’t perfect but they work surprisingly well. They hold a lot and while they are stretchy, they are also sturdy, especially for lightweight but bulky items. I use them for anything I would normally use an old plastic bag for: carrying a change of clothes, bringing food to a friend’s house, storing clothing waiting to go to the thrift store. I don’t usually use them for grocery shopping, but they work well for that as well, though I haven’t tested them on anything has heavy as gallons of milk. These are especially good for a situation where I’m not sure I’ll get the bag back. I like my grocery bagsand I hesitate to risk losing them after having slowly built up a stash.

But with these bags, I’m got nothing to lose. As a parent, I love not having to worry about my daughter smothering herself on one of these, as with a plastic grocery bag. She can play with them all she wants. In the future I might have to try this with child sized T-shirts so my daughter can have her own little bags.