TUTORIAL: T-shirt Tote Bag, 2 Ways

This is by no means an original idea, but if you haven’t seen it, I thought it would be fun to make my own tutorial.  If you’re anything like me, you have stacks of old t-shirts you don’t really like to wear anymore (because they’re so bloomin’ old!) but you can’t bear to part with them because of their sentimental significance.  I just hate seeing them sitting there, unused and taking up space, so this is a quick and easy way to make them useful.

Start by laying your t-shirt out on a flat surface.  Carefully remove the sleeves, and cut a portion from the neck area.  You may choose to make it rounded (like my photo) or square, or any other shape for that matter.  The remaining fabric will become the handles of your bag.

From here, you can choose to finish your bag one of two ways… one requires a sewing machine, the other doesn’t.  For the no-sew version, cut two rings from one of the sleeves, cutting from the side with the raw edge.  Then snip the rings so they become long strips, and stretch them out until they curl up a bit.  These will become drawstrings to close up the bottom of the tote.

Now, back to the shirt.  Make two tiny snips in the bottom hem of the t-shirt, being careful NOT to cut through the stitching.  Your snips should be equally spaced… so make one in the middle of the front of the shirt, and one in the middle of the back.  You’ll now have two channels in which to insert the drawstrings.  Attach a safety pin to one end of one of the strings and guide it through one of the channels.

Then cinch it up and tie a bow.

Repeat on the other side… and voila!  You have a finished tote bag!  (Sorry, I forgot to rotate it and didn’t have to fix it!)

Now, with the no-sew method, you’ll have little holes in the bottom of the bag… it’s just the nature of the style.  If you’d like the holes to be smaller, you’ll need more of them.  That means more drawstrings, and more “hem snips”.  Here’s an example of the bottom of a bag with two holes (the top bag), and one with three:

If you have access to a sewing machine, and don’t like having holes in the bottom of your bag, then do the following:

Form the handles of the bag the same way you did with the no-sew version.  Then turn your shirt inside out and sew up the bottom.  Be sure to sew above the hemline, which you will trim and discard.

To make a gusset (a flat bottom), “pinch” one of the bottom corners flat, and sew a seam about two or three inches in from the tip of the triangle.

Trim off the excess:

Now turn your t-shirt right side out, and you have another tote bag!

Sometimes, when you remove the neck or sleeves, you might cut off a design you like.  Simply cut it out, and stitch it somewhere on the bag.  The great thing about t-shirt material is that it won’t fray, so there’s no hemming needed.  Here’s a design that I reattached on one of my bags:

These simple totes are perfect for reusable grocery bags, clothes shopping or beach trips, or anything else you can think of.  I’ll be using several of them as gift bags for thank-you gifts for a few of our boys’ beloved Sunday School teachers:

Tags: tutorial, up-cycle

Up-cycled Baby Stuff

Time is passing quickly, and before we know it, our new baby will be here.  In the meantime, I have the world’s longest list of projects to complete, birthday and Christmas gifts to buy, and a nursery to put together.  Needless to say, I’m finding myself quite busy!

For Ryder, we did what most new parents do… go to Babies R Us and pick out the perfect overpriced bedding set that comes with more pieces than we’ll ever find a use for just the right stuff.  We LOVED what we chose.  It was gender neutral (because at the time, we didn’t know he was a he), it was educational, and it was something we could live with staring at every day for at least a couple of years (although we intended to be able to use it for all subsequent children… HA!).  Here’s a look back at how his nursery turned out:

You may remember that the laundry hamper in the bottom right corner was up-cycled quite some time ago… Reminisce by clicking here.  And we actually had to cut the crib bumper apart, leaving only the piece at the head of the crib, and the long piece against the wall.  The first night Ryder slept in his crib (which was our third night home because it took that long for me to be able to walk up the stairs!), Nikki freaked out because she couldn’t see him and tried to jump in.  Nothin’ like an 80lb. ball of fur and teeth lunging into your baby’s bed in the hope of protecting him from the monsters in the closet!  Once we removed the unnecessary pieces, she was content to stay firmly planted on the floor, just as watchful as ever.

Now, fast forward nearly two years…  Ryder has quickly and successfully transitioned to a twin bed, and no longer needs his crib bumpers.  The new baby is coming in December, and will need crib bumpers.  And since Nikki is still around, and still uber-protective, we figured we’ll be faced with the same predicament in the very near future.  Why go out and buy brand new stuff if we’ll just have to cut it apart?  (And let us not forget about the ever-useful diaper stacker, hamper, and quilt!)  So… (almost) super-mom to the rescue!  :)

I agonized over finding the perfect fabric upon which to base all future nursery decorations, and ended up with a fun array of stripes and polka-dots in various shades of teal and brown.  I re-covered Ryder’s old crib bumpers, and in a day, they went from this:

To this:

And the dust ruffle went from this:

To this:

I still plan on making a valance, and I’m sure there will be other fun things to create along the way.  But for now, I’m pretty happy with the results, and I’m super-excited to begin to put it all together.

And for those of you who  may be thinking, “But what about Ryder?  Doesn’t he get anything new?”  Of course!  I’m currently awaiting a shipment of some awesome transportation-themed fabric for his new big-boy room.  I’ll be whipping up a fun comforter and valance… and just wait till you see the shelf I scored from NapervilleYardsales.com to go on the wall in place of the quilt pictured above.  Speaking of that quilt, I have a really cool project in mind for that as well… so stay tuned!

Tags: refashion, up-cycle