Was sucked in for a week... Now I'm back

Sorry about that folks, I meant to post last week, but alas I was sucked into the awesomeness that is Diablo 3. Yes I know, shame, shame, I was sucked in like the masses, but in all fairness the game is extremely fun. Also, the boyfriend and I traveled across the grand state in which we live (Wisconsin for those asking) to visit our mothers for mother's day. Which was amazing because my lovely boyfriend Ryan had not seen his parents or anyone from his hometown in six months! But we had lots of fun and saw so many people most of last week was spent recovering and playing the game. Also Ryan's best friend, another Ryan, returned from some Army Training so we spent some time with him and his lovely family.

But back to the crafty things that fill my days, lol! This one totally floored me when I saw it on Pinterest. It totally appealed to the girl in me that holds onto tshirts I will never wear again but I get them from some event I was in or something similar. I just can't bring myself to sell them or give them to Goodwill or the like so they sit in my closet for years. Well no more of that! This is an awesome, fun and super simple way to up cycle your old event shirts or even just shirts you just can't bear to part with! Today I am going to walk you through how to turn these treasured shirts into super functional, awesome, a million and one use bags!


Like I said, I found this the other day scrolling through Pinterest and thought, I suck at sewing and I can totally do that! I can't sew a straight line to save my life and I found this so easy and you don't really have to be perfect on it. The part of this project that took me the longest was trying to get my sewing machine working, then pinning the bottom of the shirt. But that's enough of my yappin', let's get craftin'!

First: Cut the sleeves off of the shirt as close as you can to the seam without cutting the seam off, this will give your handles some strength. 

Second: Using a plate or something else big and round, mark off what will become the top of your bag. I did this with sharpie so you could see it in the pictures, but I recommend using a washable fabric marker or pencil. 


I didn't like how shallow that ended up being on this particular shirt so I just deepened it by eye. Make the opening so it would be easy for you to use. I felt that if I had left it the way it was it would have been to hard to get things in and out of the bag.


Now flip the shirt inside out, and pin all along the bottom of the shirt right by the hem. Like I said earlier this part took me the longest but that is because at first I forgot to flip the shirt inside out. Luckily I realized this before I started sewing or that could have ended up a big oops! lol.


Now sew! I read online somewhere that the best stitch for this kind of thing would be a zig zag stitch, but it took me most of the day just to get my machine working so I just did a straight stitch as close to the stitching of the hem as I could get. For extra strength once I finished going all the way across the bottom of the shirt once, I put my machine in reverse and went over it again.


All in all with out counting the time it took to get my machine running I was able to do four of these in about a half hour. I'm using them around the house for everything from a knitting bag, to a new purse for summer, to a lunch bag! I had so much fun I actually went around my house asking everyone if they had shirts I could do this to. lol. I hope you liked this fun and super simple project and I will hopefully be back soon with more things to fill my days!