Hello HC Cuties! Now that Valentine’s Day has passed, what are the next holidays to look forward to? St Patrick’s Day and Easter? I personally love Earth Day(April 22nd). To be honest, I’m not one of those extremely eco-friendly people that bike instead of drive or have their own compost bins but I try to do everything I can to help out the earth. We have different recycling bins set up at my house, we carpool as much as we can, and we DIY everything of course! Making something new out of something old is the new way to recycle, and it doesn’t take as much effort as you would think. Even though it’s still about two months away, I couldn’t wait to share with you guys this totally awesome and easy DIY I found!
Materials:
- Old t-shirt (the bigger the shirt, the bigger the bag). The message on the shirt was a total coincidence by the way. Cool, huh?
- Scissors
- 4 Safety pins
Step 1:
Begin by laying the shirt out on a flat surface, like the floor or a table. Cut off the sleeves of the shirt by following the seams. Then cut the neck part off in a semi-circle shape.
Step 2:
From the scraps of fabric you have left over from the sleeves you cut off, cut 4 one-inch strips(2 from each sleeve). Cut the strips open, so that they’re one long strip instead of a circle, and stretch them out.
Note: The sleeves of my t-shirt were folded weirdly so I just used the scraps from the neck I cut off. You can actually use any kind of fabric here, it doesn’t even have to be from the t-shirt. Different colored and textured ones would look great!
Step 3:
Add a safety pin to one end of each strip of fabric. This just serves to facilitate getting the strips through the hem of the shirt.
Step 4:
Cut 8 small evenly-spaced slits along the hem of the shirt. I recommend doing 3 in the front, 3 in the back and 1 on each side.
Step 5:
This step is a little bit confusing so I’ll try to make it as simple as possible.
Starting with the first slit on the front (not counting the side one), slide in the safety-pinned strip going in towards the left. It should come out the side slit. Then thread it through the side slit going towards the back and it should come out the first slit on the back(from left to right).
So it should look like this:
Tie loosely.
Do the same on the right side using the second string (so start on the last slit of the front part and thread it through until you get to the right side slit. Thread again through the side slit until you get to the third slit of the back side and tie loosely.)
Using the third strip, thread through the middle slit going towards the left. When you get to the knot of the first string, pull the strip through the inside of the knot so they’re kind of intertwined. Thread through the second slit of the back side and tie. Repeat using the fourth string going towards the right and tie.
Step 6:
Now that all the strips are threaded through the slits, double knot everything to make sure nothing falls out of your bag.
Step 7:
Enjoy your super rad eco-friendly bag! Not only is it cool, but it allows you to refrain from having to use plastic bags and saves you the hassle of having to buy reusable bags. You can even customize your own or even make some for your friends and family!
As a bag:
As a backpack:
Happy Crafting, HC Cuties, and happy almost Earth Day 2014!