Fused Bag Tutorial

Hey Hey!

Here is my little tutorial on a super quick and easy fused bag tutorial. If you don't know how to fuse plastic, check out this post, you can see a video on how to do it. This tutorial is a great way to reuse plastic bags and to help save the environment, which is what i'm going for :).

What you need:

- 6-8 plastic bags (I like target bags just because they are a bit thicker but you can use any plastic bags)

- Scissors and/or rotary cutter

- sewing machine

- iron

- 2 sheets of parchment paper


- 2 strips of fabric, depending on how big you want your handles, cut accordingly, mine are 2.5" x 15"


  Ok here goes

1. Take your bag(s) and  cut the top and bottom off

2. Now cut the bag open and cut out all the text and images, then lay it flat on top of the first piece of parchment paper

 3. Once you have all of your bags up open and laying flat, put the second piece of parchment paper on top and press it flat. make sure you keep your iron moving at all times, after a minute or so flip it and do the other side. it will shrink a bit.

4. Now you will have something that looks like this

5. Now fold your fused plastic in half and trim the edges

6. if you happen to have a hole (like me) you can always cover it or embroider over it. I just steamed on a cut out heart I made to hide it, but you can do anything you would like

7. Now take your 2 strips of fabric and sew them, right sides facing in. You will need to sew one end closed first, then the length of the strip, like this

8. once you have both strips sewed, turn them right side out and iron them flat then sew the other ends closed

9. For my handles I just overlapped the lengths of the handle so it looks like this

then sewed the edges to keep them together

10. Then you are going to pin your newly constructed handles to the open end of your bag and sew them on.

11. And last but not lease, sew the sides of your bag closed, i use a zig zag stitch for extra stability

Now you have a cute, up-cycled bag!

we shall save the world, one craft project at a time :)
Let me know if you have any questions as this is my first tutorial!

Thanks for letting me share

P.S
If you make a bag from this tutorial please send us a pic and post it to our flickr group.
Thanks