Make It Yourself: A reusable T-shirt bag

When is a shirt more than a shirt? When it is also a bag!

You can turn an old T-shirt into a practical, reusable bag. Use it when you go shopping at the

farmers' market or grocery store, or to carry supplies for a trip to the beach, pool or park.

Making a bag out of a shirt you don't wear anymore is a good example of recycling. Reusable

bags also help cut down on the number of plastic bags people use and discard. Experts say

that over 1 trillion plastic bags are used around the world each year. These bags take

hundreds of years to break down, so they end up littering the land and oceans. Animals

mistake them for food, which makes them sick.

Here is how to turn a T-shirt into an environmentally friendly bag.

What You Need:

An old T-shirt

Scissors

One large safety pin

By NASA.gov, adapted by Newsela staff on 05.11.17

Word Count 436

Level MAX

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How To Make It:

1. Lay the shirt flat on a table, and cut the sleeves off the shirt. Make sure the cut extends a

couple of inches below the bottom of the sleeve, to make the handle "holes" large enough to

put over your shoulder.

2. Cut out the neck of the shirt. You can make the cut round-ish, square-ish or V-shaped. You

want to make it big enough to put stuff in, but not so big that the stuff will all fall out.

3. Cut three strips of cloth from the leftover sleeves. Make them about one-half inch wide.

Cutting all the way around the sleeve will give you about the right length.

4. Stretch the strips a bit to make them curl in.

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5. On the bottom hem of the shirt, cut three small slits, just big enough to slip in the safety pin,

dividing the width into thirds (more or less).

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Some More Steps:

6. Stick the safety pin through the end of one of the strips you made, and close the pin.

7. Insert the pin, with strip, into one of the slits in the hem. Feeling for the pin, work the strip

through the hem until you reach the next slit, then pull it out.

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8. Remove the safety pin, and put it through the end of another strip. Repeat the process,

pulling this strip through the next section of the hem.

9. Finally, pull a third strip through the remaining section.

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10. Now, pull each string tight and tie its two ends together in a knot. Then tie all the strings

together.

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Ta-da! Your recycled, reused and repurposed bag is complete!

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