Monday, April 27, 2009

Low Sew Bag Holder

Ingredients:
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• Pair of old jeans (like the ones above, whose zipper died well before the material did)
• sewing scissors (scissors that have only been used to cut fabric... paper dulls scissors)
• sewing machine
• thread (I normally forget this one... but today I didn't really care what colour it was, so I used what was already threaded.)

Step 1: Fold the jeans so that the leg seams line up:
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Step 2: Cut one leg off using a curved line:
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(Die, stupid jeans!!!)

Step 3: Turn the jeans inside out, and practise sewing tucks at the bottom of the leg:
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(By "tuck", I mean to fold the jeans where you want the tuck to be centred, and sew a diagonal line from the hem to a point somewhere up the leg.) Stop when there are enough tucks so that the bags won't fall out, but there's still a big enough hole to pull the bags out of. Note: I didn't bother cutting the spare material off.

Step 4: Double-fold over and sew the top edge, creating a nice hem, then make a messy attempt at a button hole:
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(Note that there's no zoomed in view of the button hole... believe me, it's better this way.) Cut the centre of the button hole open.

Step 5: Stuff the bag holder full of those free trash bags you get when shopping, and hang on a hook in the broom closet:
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(Note: the actual designated hook for the bag holder is much lower, but it's around the corner where it's hard to get a good photo due to the desk piece blocking me from fully opening the door.)

If you want to, you can use the other leg for those bags that don't make good trash bags, but are still useful for other things. However, my sewing enthusiasm ran out after the first one, so I'll just use a narrow non-trash-bag for those. (For now, at least.)

3 comments:

Alicia said...

Thanks for the tip. I really need one of those!

Dandy said...

clever!

Prairie Chicken... said...

Repurposing at its best. Super rad!