How to Make Plastic Bag Stuff

Turn useless plastic bags into useful plastic yarn for crafts.

Recycling is all about taking things that would be normally thrown away and turning them into useful items. There are few things as common in household garbage as plastic bags from grocery and other stores. While many people use them as small trash can liners, most families generally collect too many to ever use in this way. Turn these useless bags into plastic yarn, or "plarn," to recycle them into many useful items such as handbags, place mats and even floor mats for mud rooms.

Things You'll Need

• Plastic bags
• Sharp scissors
• Ruler or measuring tape

Instructions

1. Lay a plastic bag on the table in front of you with the handles toward the top. Smooth out the bag to make sure that the layers are flat and that there are no wrinkles.

2. Fold the left half of the bag over the right half, matching up all of the edges and handles. Smooth the bag layers. Fold the left half of the folded bag over the right half again. You now have a thin strip of folded plastic. Rotate the folded bag around so that the handles are sticking out toward the left.

3. Cut across the bag right below where the handles end, creating a straight edge. Discard the handle plastic. Make another cut parallel to the first, 1 inch farther down the bag. Continue cutting the bag into strips 1 inch wide until you reach the end of the bag. Discard the bottom piece of the bag. The strips that you cut off are now loops of plastic material.

4. Connect all of the loops into one long strand. Lay one loop in front of you, opened up. Grasp another loop that is folded in half and thread the folded loop through the opening in the center of the open loop. Hold one end of the folded loop in each hand. You now have a folded loop that has an open loop hanging from it.

5. Push the end of the loop that is in your right hand through the end of the loop that is in your left hand. Pull the right hand loop end so that the plastic slides down and creates a knot. You have now connected two loops together. Continue connecting loops to create one long strand, winding the strand into a ball as if it were yarn.

6. Search crochet patterns for simple items using a large crochet hook. Many books and online crochet sites show patterns specifically for quick crochet using large hooks. These patterns are ideal for plarn. Keep the texture of the plarn in mind when making items. While it is a very good material for pot scrubbers and mud-scraping mats, it won't work very well for garments.

Tips & Warnings

• Crochet plarn loosely, as tightly done stitches look more like plastic knots than actual crocheted goods.

References

• My Recycled Bags: Instructions for Cutting Plastic Bags & Creating Recycled Plastic Yarn
• Plastic Bag Crafts: Make Plarn