Recycled Plastic Messenger Book Bag

I crocheted this messenger book bag from recycled plastic Safeway bags. People ask me all the time how many bags it takes to crochet different projects of mine. I did a calculation on this project as I crocheted it. I found that I used about 3 bags for two full rounds on the crocheted body of the bag. Therefore I used about 39 bags to crochet the main body of this book bag. Overall I recycled about 60 plastic bags to crochet the messenger book bag.

I cut my plarn about 1 inch wide using the looping method to create my plastic bag yarn.

I crocheted 26 rows in half double crochet (HDC) before starting the flap. For the flap, I crocheted 12 rows in HDC before starting the decreases for the tapered flap. I crocheted a total of 25 rows and then added a edging of single crochet stitching around the edges of the flap. By adding the single crochet stitches, it helps even out the edges and makes for a smooth finish to the flap.

I crocheted my strap even on 6 stitches wide for a 35 inch long strap.

The original crochet pattern for the messenger bag is found here. It’s a free plarn crochet pattern and I just tweaked it a bit to make this smaller book bag of 14″ wide by 11.5″ long. The original crochet pattern makes a 15-1/2 inches wide and 13 inches long bag with a 42 inch strap.

You might have noticed that the Safeway plastic bags are more tan in color on the body of the bag. These were some very old bags I had stored. And now Safeway uses a more brown bag and therefore I tried to do the flap in all of those bags to stay uniform in my project. As I said above, this recycled bag project recycled about 60 plastic bags and hopefully my librarian friend will enjoy this book bag as a retirement gift.