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This process is a great way to recycle those old plastic bags into something useful. You can crochet or knit a cool tote bag similar to reusable totes that are sold.
Cutting
Lay recycled bag out flat
Fold in half lengthwise then fold in half again
Cut off top handles
Cut bag in strips about 1 inch wide or as desired
Set aside the end of bag where bottom edge was glued. The ends and the handles can be recycled either as stuffing for other projects, packing material for shipping, or taken to your local recycling bin for plastic bags.
Tying strips together
Take two strips and inter-twine together as shown
Gently pull on ends to knot two strips together
Connect next strip to last strip in the same manner
Continue connecting strips until you have a large ball of plastic yarn
Tips:
Pull ends evenly to create a smooth and flat strip.
If you find your strip doesn’t lie flat between knots, you didn’t pull
evenly which creates a bunched strip. Just make sure your strip is
even before you pull your knot tight between the two connected
strips. To fix a bunched strip, just loosen your knot between the strips
then pull on the ends again to make your strip flat and smooth.
Very cool! Will try this project with my 6 year old, who loves to turn all of our recylcables into various things. Lately, she’s been turning cardboard boxes into musical instruments by filling them with a few dried beans and taping them up. This will be a great craft to learn together. Thanks!
Oh, wow, that’s such an easier way to cut the strips for ‘plarn’ than what I’ve been doing. ‘m trying to use my extra plastic bags to make grocery bags, and it’s the cutting strips that’s making it a tedious project.
Thanks for the tip!
Great for small, but I like industrial. I do the same locking pattern with the handle loop and a hole in the bottom of another bag. Fold in half lengthwise 4 times (pattern inward or outward depending on your color preferences) and cut a perpendicular 3/8″ slice on fold about 1/2″ from bottom. Open 1 fold to reveal 6/8″ hole to thread the handles through. Much quicker and thicker. No waste of bag or time.
Thank you for sharing your great idea,so far I`ve only used bags for garbage collection. Now I`ll make shopping bags, to help cut down land fill.
Thank you again
Lois
Harris Teeter has an annual bag drive in their Together In Education program where they team up with Trex and have a competition amongst their enrolled schools. Each participating school collects plastic bags (when I contacted them last year they said ANY plastic bags, ziploc, grocery, or otherwise) and whichever school turns in the most wins–in 2007 it was $500 towards beautification of school grounds and a Trex park bench.
I don’t know what the balance is in regards to pros and cons of Trex and the production of their products, but on the surface I like the idea of making useful and durable things like patios and benches out of recycled plastic. They might be worthy of the scraps leftover from the plarn crafting AND the discards when the scrubbies, and bags, do finally wear out. *shrug*
thanks for all the great info.
Hi Cindy,
Many thanks for these instructions. I’m going to give them ago and try to reduce the amount of plastic I send to landfill by knitting with plarn.
All the best,
Transition housewife’s last blog post..Hate plastic, love plarn
Thank you for this! I have been wanting to make plarn for market bags for a while now… but the idea of cutting each bag into one long strip seem like way to much work! This is way better! Thank you so much!
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We started this last night, just a few bags really makes a lot of loops! My children took the ends…stuffing for something or other.
We’re going to try a rug first, thank you for all the info. 🙂
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Here is a related story you might find interesting: The recycling of plastic bags into crocheted carrying bags, called Mochilas which are used by both men and women, is being used by Proyecto Titi to help save the Cotton-top Tamarin, an endangered small primate found only in the tropical forests of Columbia. The bags were littering the environment and jeopardizing the health of the cotton-tops. This project not only gets the bags out of the environment but, by providing funds for the village families, reduces the impact on the forest resources. And they are the cutest little primates in the Americas!!
This is sooooo kewl. I had a baby afghan kit for 30+ years. After I retired, I learned how to crochet, starting with a potholder. The baby afghan was the next project I completed.
I love to crochet, but the yarn plays havoc with my allergies–so this what the doctor ordered!!!
I don’t know how to do it, but I would like to put a link in my blog where I can click on your name and it points to you. Would you be able to instruct me as to how this is done? Or where there is a site that can explain what the difference is between subscribing, following and all that bloggie stuff?
Lucy
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Lucien:
Glad you stopped by. As you use Blogger for your blog, you can just add my site to your blog roll. Just go to your admin page in Blogger and add https://www.stg1.myrecycledbags.com/
Cindy, this is really awesome! I’ve got tons of these bags at home. I’ve started shopping at Aldi recently, and you have to bring your own bags. I’m going home to get started tonight 🙂
-HannaH
Hi Cindy,
Well it took a while, but I’ve created my first plarn purse. Many thanks again for these instructions it worked really well.
Transition housewife’s last blog post..Plarn purse
RE: Jerry Scovel’s idea using plarn and plastic bottles…
If you go to the Instructables web site “plastic rope” into the search box, you’ll get a number of projects that use plarn to make rope. The best one (in my opinion) uses a rope-making machine to twist the plarn into real rope. Go here for the details. The nice thing about this technique is that you can take the rope you’ve made and use the rope-making machine to twist it into thicker rope. Very strong and easily done in a third-world country.
I have heard of this but could not picture it, now I see it. Interesting! I make purses out of coffee bags. freecycle.org is a great site to find people who will save stuff and you either pick up or mail a SASE.
Greendesigns’s last blog post..Large Funky Eco Tote/Bag/ Purse made with Recycled Coffee bags
We make long strips by cutting the handles and bottoms off then folding the bags like you do but leaving about 3″ hanging out. When you cut the strips, don’t cut the end 3″. Now starting at the end of the uncut strip across the middle, cut from outside end over to the first slice and continue cutting from 2nd slice to 3rd slice. You will end up with one continuous strand.
@Debora,
Yes, this is another good method for making plarn and also works great for cutting a tee-shirt into T-yarn.
Hi Cindy, That was a great idea and very useful. Thank you for posting it.
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Hi, I love the whole recycling thing, but I’m a bit worried about the number of plastic bags all these “eco-friendly” people are collecting. And if it’s such a great idea, isn’t there a temptation to go out and get more bags to make more plarn? This increases the demand on the bags that should really have been abolished from our supermarkets long ago. In the end, it’s still non-biodegradable rubbish when you get fed up with your hand knitted plarn bag and want to make another one. Hope everyone out there will use their plarn bags to go shopping from now on, stop picking plastic bags up from supermarkets and shops, and keep spreading the message that they are a bad idea, whatever good use you put them to.
This is exactly what I was looking for. This way of making plarn is so much easier than what I imagined it would be. It will be a perfect way to do my homework for college. I have a dress and humanity class that requires me to recycle something and make it into something new. This is a perfect idea.
Just to say thank you for a very easy thing to try. i can see making twine for my garden this way too. so many uses and unfortunately so much plastic!
Plard , I love that !
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