Friday, June 19

How To: Make A Plastic Bag Dispenser

Though we try to remember to bring our own bags and/or get paper when we go shopping, we inevitably end up with reams of plastic bags that are handy to have but impossible to store.  I saw a version of a dish-towel-turned-plastic-bag-storage, and I've actually done a similar project for our kitchen before. But when it was recently determined that Harper Ann could use one for her bedroom,  I thought I'd share how it was done!


You'll need:


  • A dish towel
  • A piece of binding tape or ribbon
  • A small piece of elastic
  • Scissors, thread and sewing maching

Start by ironing out your dish towel.  Wasting several minutes trying to get a GIF of the iron steaming is entirely optional.



Fold over and iron the ends of the towel.  In my case, the narrow fold was to house the elastic, the large fold was to make the finished dispenser a reasonable size.


Sew each end.  Wasting several more minutes trying to get (yet another) GIF of the sewing machine doing its thang, optional.


Cut your elastic roughly 1/4 the length of the towel end.


Feed the elastic through the sewn end.  Kilt pins are incredibly handy for this sort of thing, btw, though a large safety pin works just as well with less flare.


When you've fed the elastic into the hem just enough to get the piece just inside, run over and sew down the end.  Then continue feeding the elastic through to the other end.



Sew the sides of the towel together.  It gets a bit tricky when you get to the end with the elastic, but just take your time and remember its just a plastic bag dispenser, not an heirloom quilt :)


Leave the towel dispenser inside out.  Measure out your bias tape/ribbon which will be the hanger for the dispenser.  Iron the bias tape open.


Pin it to each side of the dispener.


Sew on the handle, then turn the dispenser right side out.


Jam it full of plastic bags and start dispensing!


This project took about 30 minutes, complete with picture taking and a brief yet frantic search for my kilt pin.  Super simple, yet very functional.  Voila!


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1 comment:

  1. I love it! Very cool. I will likely never make it simply because I'm lazy like that but I do love it.

    ReplyDelete

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