…reusable shopping bag – free pattern…

With the recent ban on single use plastic bags, it was just the kick up the butt I needed to finally tackle a project that has been on my to-do list for, quite literally, years. I had made a reusable shopping bag previously for my mum, all the way back in 2009, and which she still uses on the regular (which I’m pretty chuffed about!), and ever since, I had planned to make one for myself. But, of course, a whole lot of life has happened since that first bag, and so it kept getting pushed down the to-do list…until now.

I’ve been caught a few times since the plastic bag ban, when I pop into the shops on the spur of the moment for “just one thing”, and walk out with the kids holding an item or two each. I’m quite good at remembering my bags for the big weekly shop, but sometimes we’ll be down the street and decide to grab something, and I don’t have a bag on hand. So sewing time it was. I followed the same free bag tutorial (2020 UPDATE – this tutorial has disappeared so I have recreated it, which can be found in this post here). I used last time, though I made my pouch a bit bigger, which I am not thrilled with, so I may correct that later on this week. I’m really not sure why I put this off for so long, it was a quick project, only a couple of hours start to finish, including a couple of cups of coffee, chatting with the family, and inspecting the kids cubby house they built in the loungeroom. I also chucked some Netflix on the computer and watched To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, so there were some sewing breaks when I paused to actually watch parts of the movie rather than just listen along. Not a bad way to pass a rainy Sunday afternoon, really.

Following the tutorial, I created my own template using a shopping bag I had on hand – the last one in the house, and I must confess, I did think twice before cutting it up after parking 15c for the darn thing – because we all know I’m a total tightwad paying for craft supplies, right? Now that they are far less readily available, I took the opportunity to create a template for the handle section, which you can download for free, and then customise to whatever length you desire (I added 12.5″ to the baseline of mine). Once you’ve printed the template, the linked tutorial will step you through the process.

{DOWNLOAD HANDLE TEMPLATE HERE}

Today, I’m back in the craft room. Once we’ve dropped the Beetle Baby to preschool, we need to pop to the greengrocers for some veggies for dinner, and the fabric shop for some Very Important Book Week supplies, and home to finish our costumes ahead of this week’s homeschool meet-up. A bit of school work, turning the heel on my current sock project, and if I’m really lucky, some hand quilting as I work towards a quilt finish this week (hopefully). In between all that I need to finish the last of the pruning on the fruit trees, and check on the current seedling sproutings. A full, busy, happy, productive kind of day. Time to rock this sun-shiny hump day.

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Welcome! This pattern, and the tutorial to make the bag remain one of my most popular posts, so chances are this is the post that brought you to my blog. I’m so happy to have you here! I would like to invite you to poke around in the archives and my most recent posts – if you like sewing and crafting, you might like the rest of my blog, or even my podcast!
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This is project four of 26 for the Make All The ThingsChallenge I am doing with Carrose Creative. You can see my other finished projects here. Please feel free to play along if you would like and drop us a link in the comments to your project!