T-shirt Into Drawstring Bag Tutorial

I woke up inspired this morning, and so decided to share it with the world, so here’s my tutorial for turning an old t-shirt into an awesome bag, in this case it’s toddler sized for my son, but size wise you’re only limited by the size of your t-shirt.

You will need:

• one kick arse retro t-shirt
• Some cording, or something to make the straps out of - I just used yarn braided to make it stronger.
• A toddler willing to pose so you can plaster his picture all over the internet.

First, find a totally awesome 80s cartoon shirt that you bought when you were fifteen and have been hanging onto in the hope that one day you will magically become a size 10, despite spawning two children, and once again fit into it… or is that just me? Either way, find a kick ass t-shirt

Cut it down to the size you want to make your bag, mine is about 10 inches x 12 inches, I didn’t want to make it too large as I didn’t want my son to look like a pack mule, but as I was obviously a fan of baring most of my stomach when I was 15… lets just say there wasn’t much fabric to work with! If you want to make it a little bigger you could incorporate the side seams of the t-shirt to save you work.

Fold over the top edge to make your casing for your drawstring. If you’re not a expert at working with jersey I would recommend pinning (I hate working with jersey!) sew along your casing with a 3/4 inch seam taking care not to stretch and morph the fabric.

Put your t-shirt right sides together and pin together the three sides to be sewn. When sewing reinforce the opening of the bag, where the blue is marked, with backstitching whilst taking care not to sew your casing shut (come one, we’ve all done it at some point!). Sew the three sides leaving gaps on either side at the bottom, where the yellow is marked, for your straps.

Using a safety pin thread whatever you’re using as the straps through one side of the casing, and then back through the other, so that both ends of the strap are coming through the same side of the bag, but one is through the back, and one is through the front. I didn’t have any cording that would match (I guess that would be coordinating cording, but damn that’s hard to say) so I braided three strands of yarn in red, orange and yellow, it came out much better than I originally thought! Do the same thing on the opposite side.

Tuck the ends of your cording inside the bag via the holes you left previously, the length you need to leave out depends on what size the person who’s carrying it is going to be, so it’s something you’ll just have to eyeball. If it’s too long then you can always knot it to make it shorter as I did with Declan’s one. Flip your bag inside out, line up your cording and sew the gap shut trapping the straps in there, I went over this about seven times in total to give it strength and make sure that the yarn wasn’t going to go anywhere. I also trimmed the bottom corners at this point so they would turn in more neatly.

Tadaa, and you have a fabulous finished bag, and instead of sitting in a closet thinking about its bygone days, your t-shirt has a new lease of life! Hong Kong Fooey gets to fight another day!

As with all tutorials on CraftBlog.com.au this tutorial is for personal use only, please do not use this tutorial to make items to sell.