How to Make a Reusable Shopping Bag from a Tee Shirt

Most grocery stores these days package customers' groceries in plastic bags. These bags clutter up our homes and then go on to live for hundreds of years in landfills after we finally throw them away. One very simple thing we all can do to help protect the environment is to take reusable cloth shopping bags with us to the grocery store.

When I decided that I wanted to start using my own cloth shopping bags, I was concerned about what it would cost to buy enough to do my weekly shopping. I guess I buy a lot of groceries! I wanted to have bags that I liked, bags that were pretty or interesting to look at. Certainly that's not necessary and if you need to go green on a budget you can buy the cheapest totes you can find and they'll get the job done. But what if I told you that you can make your own reusable shopping bags cheaply and easily and have a variety of nice looking bags?

You can. These reusable shopping bags, made from old tee shirts, can be made in less than half an hour, and that's if you are sewing by hand. If you use a sewing machine, they take mere minutes. I used some of my own old tee shirts that I did not wear anymore and I also made a number of tee shirt shopping bags from tee shirts I purchased at a local thrift store for just 99 cents apiece.

What You Need

tee shirt
thread
sewing machine or a needle for hand sewing
scissors

Step One

Select a tee shirt. The size of the tee shirt will determine the size of your shopping bag. I find the best sizes to use are either a child's large or an adult's small. If you are selecting a tee shirt based on a picture, logo or design on the shirt, keep in mind that you will be cutting away part of the shirt when making the bag.

Step Two

Turn the tee shirt inside-out.

Step Three

Align the bottom edges of the tee shirt and sew them together. This will become the bottom of your shopping bag. Use straight pins to close the bottom of the shirt and keep the edges straight if this helps you. You can use a sewing machine or sew the bottom of the shirt closed by hand.

Step Four

Cut off the sleeves of the tee shirt. Basically, you will be making it look like a tank top (and yes, you can make a shopping bag out of a sleeveless tee shirt or tank top if you want to. Just keep in mind that some tank tops are made of very thin material and may not make a very sturdy shopping bag.). The shoulders of the shirt will become the handles of your shopping bag.

Step Five

Cut around the neckline of the tee shirt. This will become the opening of your bag and you need to enlarge it enough to be able to easily put items in the bag and take things out of the bag. You can position a round dinner plate over the neck of your tee shirt to cut around in order to get a smooth, even line if you like.

Step Six

Turn the tee shirt right-side-out again and you have a reusable shopping bag!

Warning

You can make reusable shopping bags out of other kinds of shirts as well. Just keep in mind the fact that tee shirt material does not unravel when it's cut, so you do not need to hem around the sleeves or neckline when you cut them. If you use certain other types of fabric, though, they will unravel so you'll need to hem the edges if you want your bag to last very long.