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Category: Plastic Bag Crafts

8 years and Still Going

Cindy16 Comments

8 years ago on January 24, I posted my first blog post here at My Recycled Bags. Since 2007 I have shared and added over a hundred different recycled and crocheted patterns. I have battled and so far beaten cancer and posted over 400 blog posts. Through it all, I have meet and become friends with many wonderful people on-line.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank all my friends, family and on-line acquaintances. The last 8 years has been fun and very rewarding. As you may know, I love to crochet and make things from recycled materials. Over the years I’ve created things from plastic bags, denim, t-shirts, VCR tapes, cassette tapes, old clothing, and other recycled materials. I share all my patterns free to everyone from plarn to denim on my patterns page where I have all the projects shown with thumbnails.

I hope you have found this blog site useful and have enjoyed reading it as much as I have sharing projects, ideas and thoughts over the years.

Making Plarn from a Plastic Tablecloth

Cindy8 Comments

I received a nice email from Anne asking about making plarn (plastic bag yarn) from some old tablecloths she had. She asked “Have you ever used any of the fairly inexpensive plastic banquet length table covers to make plarn?” And if so how do you do it? Well I replied to Anne at the email she left but it came back undeliverable so I thought I’d take this opportunity and respond in a post explaining the process.

Yes you can recycled those inexpensive plastic tablecloths into plarn. If the plastic is very thin, I would cut them about 1 to 1-1/2 inches wide depending on the thickness of plarn you desire. You want to cut the plastic in one long continuous strand as I did when I recycled some large plastic wedding gift bags.

The wedding gift bag plastic was very heavy so I cut it thinner but use your judgement depending on what you what to do with your recycled plastic yarn. I made a simple diagram below to show how you start cutting and just go around and around the plastic tablecloth to create one long strand. Should the plastic strand break, just tie a knot to join two strands. Roll the knot between your thumb and finger

Recycling Plastic Rings for Towel Holders

Cindy11 Comments

We are having a CAL (crochet-a-long) over in our Trash to Treasures group on Ravelry. We are crocheting kitchen towel holders.

Here is the plastic ring holder I recycled to use in this crafting project. This plastic holder is used in retail stores to hold together two hot sauce jars. I thought it would be a good ring to use for the base of my towel holder. Here is how I recycled the plastic holder.

Cut the rings apart with sharp scissors and trim the edges so they look like these below. The rings are 3 inches wide and make an excellent base for the towel holder pattern.

Crochet around the plastic ring using two strands of yarn held together. I generally did 3 single crochets in between each plastic flange on the ring. This provides a nice even coverage over the recycled plastic ring.

Now just follow the towel ring holder pattern that Delights created to finish off the holder.

Here are a few more towel holders I crocheted

Over a Hundred Free Plarn Patterns

Cindy2 Comments

If you are looking for free plarn patterns or craft ideas for using recycled plastic bags, you are at the right website. I have over a hundred free plarn patterns at My Recycled Bags.com. When I started this blog site back in 2007, I had just one crochet pattern for using recycled plastic bags made into plarn. Over the last 7 years I have created and added over a hundred new plarn patterns which I offer free to everyone for their personal use.

In case you are new to recycled crafting, plarn is the term which refers to the material one can make by cutting plastic bags into strips. Thus the term is PL (plastic) + ARN (yarn) = PLARN.

I want to provide everyone with a comprehensive post here and provide everyone links on how to make plarn to all the different designs I have available in my pattern links.

First if you want to know how to make plarn from regular plastic retail bags, here is my picture tutorial on how to make plarn. Maybe you have the thin newspaper bags and wonder how to make plarn from those. Here is my newspaper bag plarn making tutorial.

Finally here is the link to all my free plarn patterns. I have everything from purses, totes, draft dodgers, baskets, scrubbies, slippers, rugs, clothes pin bags to hats.

Reusable Water Bottle and Holder

Cindy7 Comments

Here is a new twist on a recycled plastic water bottle holder. I crocheted this water bottle holder using recycled plastic newspaper bags. I cut the plastic bags into 1 inch wide strips using this plarn making tutorial. Here is the free crochet pattern for the plastic bag water bottle holder. But the twist on this water bottle combo is the water container. I inserted a glass Mason jar into the plarn holder to hold the water.

This idea can be used for several different sizes of reusable and recycled glass jars as the plarn holder stretches and fits many sizes of jars and recycled glass bottles. The good thing about using glass is that you don’t need to worry about the plastic breaking down and you actually beginning to ingest the plastic if you reuse the bottle. Here is a recycled pint size jar in the same plastic bag holder as above.