I'm a Bag Lady

Sorry about that lag in posting, Nita came in last Thursday and we were hard at it, shopping, cooking and eating.  Then we had to chill out with a facial and massage that was undoubtedly the BEST massage I've ever had.  On to the business of this post.  BAGS!

I love bags.  I might be a collector, or maybe just a hoarder of bags.  No... not plastic bags, eeewww plastic bags are horrible.  I try not to use many plastic bags or plastic things.  Hubby likes baggies for things in his lunch, like brownies and cookies and candies.

I have knitting bags of course

I'm working on my PhD... projects half done.

and I keep a couple of those thin fold-into-a-tiny-bundle bags in my purse for unexpected purchases.

I should start making these,  I probably have fabric that could be used for just this sort of thing.

Of course I have re-usable grocery bags! Jody calls these "perhaps bags" or "movie grocery bags".  

Love my net bags, but the Sack-it Boys hate them.

I keep them all in my Going to the Grocery Store Bag.

Shhh, it's really just a wine bag that I ripped out the stitching on one of the compartments to make it bigger. 

One day looonnng ago I was digging through the mark-down tables at my local grocery store.  You can find some good stuff in the mark-downs but stay away from the cheese.   I found these re-usable produce bags.

$6.99 at Container Store on-line, I think they may be even more in the store.  Here are some I found on another website.

These bags are made of a mesh fabric that is a little sturdier that tule netting but still sheer enough that produce can be scanned through the fabric.  In the mark-down bin these babies were around $2.50 per package of 3...  yeah, I grabbed up all they had.  4 packages, I'd seen them at The Container Store and knew what kind of a bargain I was getting.  I kept 2 packages for myself and gave the other 2 packages away cuz I'm just nice like that.

Then one day I was in the fabric store buying fabric like I do and I ran across some fabric that was a mesh sort of like the produce bags but sturdier!  So I bought a yard (maybe a yard and a half) and threw it in my fabric stash like I do when I'm not off for the summer.

So it's summer now and I thought "hey, I should make those bags." I figured out how many I could make without ANY left over waste.  I used EVERY last inch of that stuff.  Of course I don't have any pictures of how I laid out the fabric, I just fly by the seat of my pants at this creating stuff.

I serged my bags up the two sides, most of the bags were just folded in half with the fold on the bottom. One of my first bags I folded the top edges over first and stitched them down before serging the sides right up to the casing.

Bag with casing sewn before the sides were sewn.

This left a casing for my cord to run through on each side.   That worked fine but I remembered that I had some small grommets in my sewing junk.

I serged I don't know if that's a proper word but I'm going to use it both sides of the bag up to the top.  Then I folded the top down to form a casing.  I carefully measured eyeballed where I wanted my grommet to be placed, and clipped a tiny hole in the bag.

Hole clipped

Then I took everything outside to the concrete pad by the backdoor this 4X4ft square was labeled "patio" when we bought our house, we were forced to build The Big Deck because we couldn't find tiny furniture to fit "the patio."

Place the grommet on the 'right side' of the fabric

 You want to do this process on concrete because you have to whack it with a hammer and whacking on tile or marble can result in cracked tile or marble and a husband that goes nuts on you.  Just take it outside, I know it's hot but it doesn't take long.

My grommets came with a little plastic setter contraption, the grommet is under the fabric with the blue plastic thingy under it.

 Follow the directions on your grommet setter as to how to set the grommet in place.  I think this set is made for making belts I can't even remember where I got this stuff, could have been in my Mom's stash that I inherited.

About to whack the setting tool on the wrong side of the grommet which is the right side to whack it on.

 After setting all the grommets in all my bags I then went back to the sewing machine (not the serger) and folded the top of the bags down toward the inside and stitched them to form a casing.

 I then ran a length of Rat Tail cording (it's a satin cord that is perfect for this type of project) through the casing and tied a knot in the end.  I have a bunch of cording that I inherited from Aunt Shorty's stash which makes it perfect for this project.

Ta Da!  I ended up with 2 large bags plenty big enough for potatoes, 4 medium sized bags, and 2 wee bags about the size of a sandwich bag.  These are great for little things like garlic or a few nuts from the bulk isle.

Finished bags, I sized my bags roughly the same size as the store bought versions.

I gave some of these I don't know what sizes, because I was just grabbing them out of my Going to the Store Bag to my friend Dawn.  She was so excited! She hates plastic too.

In the $$ break down...  I think I may have paid $6 for the fabric, the grommets and Rat Tail were free, so these bags were probably less than 75 cents each!  That's crazy!  They were SO easy to make.

Make yourself some produce bags and quit using those plastic bags in the grocery store. Unless you have dog or cat poop to pick up, they're great for that!