Remember back here and here in 2009, when I was weaving plastic to make a shopping bag? I did say at the time it was "like a crazy woman" and indeed, it was.
First, here's the reason why I'm talking about this project again. I finally added handles to the bag and sewed down the top hem.
Such a small thing, but there are Reasons why this project has languished for more than two years.
First, the details. I decided to use the same yarn for the handles, so I wove the straps using pencil weaving. Some people call this finger weaving, but it gets confused a lot with finger knitting, which is basically crochet without a hook. Pencil weaving is an actual woven process and it's incredibly easy to manage. Unlike inkle loom weaving, it doesn't require anything that you don't already have in your house.
I tied about a dozen strands of yarn about 60cm long to my pencil. You can butterfly or tie up the loose ends until you need then, and that stops you getting tangled up as you go along. You need to use an even number of strands, and for this reason, a lot of instructions suggest cutting double lengths and attaching them to the pencil with a clove hitch in the centre of the length. Take the first strand on the right and weave it under and over the adjacent strands until you reach the other side. Repeat this process. As you go, you'll realise that the pencil is actually on the diagonal. Keep weaving until your strand is long enough or you run out of yarn. Tie all the strands together firmly, with an overhand knot. Slide the loops from the pencil and tie an overhand knot at that end.
You can make all different patterns using this method, just as you can with inkle loom weaving. I knew my weaving would be folded over, so there wasn't a lot of point in making complex patterns that wouldn't be visible. Here are the woven straps:
The handles I wove had one problem. As it's a diagonal weave, the handles stretched when I put tension on them. That's not entirely desirable in a handle on a bag that will hold heavy stuff, like shopping, so I knew I had to back them or support them in some way. I took some cord straps that I'd saved from another shopping bag. They were rather like short shoe laces. I machine stitched across the ends of the weaving, so it wouldn't unravel, folded the finger weaving around the cords and stitched it in place with blanket stitch, using the same yarn as the weaving.
Then I machine stitched the handles to the inside of the bag, at the same time as sewing the top hem down. Then I hand stitched both sides of the handles to the bag, for extra strength.
OK, so why was this a dumb idea?
Well, this kind of weaving works just fine with supermarket bags, which are soft and a little stretchy. The green plastic from cherry packaging that I used in one layer of the weaving worked fine, as it was soft and made a good woven fabric with the yarn warp. The other plastic, from the shopping bags from chain stores that we don't tend to reuse as bags, were too stiff to weave nicely and had incredibly sharp edges, when cut.
The result was a weave that doesn't have much structural integrity. Oh, and hands ripped to ribbons by the sharp edges! They really aren't suitable for this kind of project, which is frustrating. Part of the purpose of the project was to reuse plastic materials like this that normally get thrown out and this clearly isn't the way to do that.
I went ahead and assembled the bag anyway, but I probably ought to have stitched the weaving to the lining and then made the bag, as the lining is the main thing giving the bag some strength. I suspect that the plastic will cut the yarn warp threads fairly quickly, once the bag starts being used. I've already mentioned the stretchy handles, though that was easy to remedy and used other recycled materials. But I wouldn't say the bag is a huge success. So it languished in my workroom for all this time, since it hardly seemed worthwhile finishing it. It's finished because I just want to clear stuff like this out of my workroom, and out of my head!
However, it is finished.
Today I sewed together my shopping bag. Now, it just needs straps and the top hem sewing down, and a solid base. I'm thinking I might make the straps in tablet weaving, which I've never done before. More to come...
One of the bees that fly around in my large and capacious hat is the need to reuse and recycle. I've been recycling and composting and generally making everything work twice as hard since before it became a fashionable thing (hey, that puts me ahead of the world in Something!). One issue on which I have Opinions is the whole free plastic bag thing (and my opinions are not necessarily what you may think). I wanted to consider some of the many other plastics that we are inundated with every day and which are still beyond the capacity of formal recycling. I decided to see whether I liked weaving with plastic strips but I didn't want to use those shopping bags. So I collected some of the other plastics that came through my house and cut them into strips to weave into a shopping bag.(Hey, it's no crazier than cutting up fabric to make a quilt, is it?)
I was really motivated by the idea of making something 100% recycled, so I warped up the loom with my leftover 8-ply knitting wool in every imaginable colour, from forty years of knitting projects. It may come as no great surprise to you to discover that, at some time in the past forty years, moths have come to visit this little treasure trove of past knitting memories. I soon found out which ones were affected, usually when I was halfway through putting it in a warp. It was a slow business.
Next, I had to cut the plastic strips. I've been hoarding plastic bags for some time in anticipation of this project, so I had a session cutting several into long spirals. I found, for weaving purposes, plastics ain't plastics. The ones I'd most wanted to use, those ones with luscious colours and deep blacks from boutiques and department stores are really not nice for weaving. The cut edges are sharp and they give you paper cuts (plastic cuts?) while you're cutting them, and then while you're winding them onto the shuttle and then while you're weaving. The gorgeous, must-use-again bags are the heavy soft plastic ones you get from stores when you buy lots of things that need a big bag. They are from the same sort of material as a supermarket plastic shopping bag but made from a heavier thicker plastic. I also had a lovely green plastic bag that the Christmas cherries came in (inside their box). Building supplies frequently come in heavy plastic, and you can often harvest it from the fields around new housing estates! (Thanks Kaite.)
I had planned to weave a separate gusset for the bag, because I thought the plastic fabric might be difficult to sew but once I began, I saw that the fabric I was making could easily be sewn on the machine, so I didn't bother. I wove a narrow band with black wool yarn, to form a hem at the top, and then wove stripes with the different colours of plastic bag, ending with another band of black wool. I've stitched the knotted eds to make sure they're secure, and sewn it into a simple bag shape, that looks like this: 
I will make a gusset by sewing the corners, turn down the top hem, and add a lining from old dressmaking fabric and straps. Stay tuned.
Because of not making the bag sections separately, to add the gusset between them, I had some warp left. I used some leftover red wool yarn to weave the remainder of the warp which gave me a piece I plan is to fold it over like this :
(a bit hard to see, I know) into a clutch, stiffen it, line it and hey, I have a free purse. I have yet to decide whether to leave the fringe on the outside or sew it on the inside. I'm currently thinking inside... I might also embellish it a bit, add a bit of stitching perhaps, maybe I'll felt it, who knows? Time will tell.
And all this from rubbish lying around the house!
