Sunday, April 30, 2006

Finished!

Oh the delights of a good old fashioned canvas bag. I was going to make another m.a.p. bag (museum all purpose bag). But I need to make this shirt first and I just haven't had the time or the space to layout and cut skirt pieces.... so I had just decided that it would have to wait until school is finished, but I came across a great idea that I just couldn't wait to make. I was at the friday afternoon knitting group and me and this woman were talking about how plastic shopping bags create such waste and that we started reusing old ones for trips to the local natural foods store and even such places as aldi (where you have to buy your bags). She told me that she had been doing that for a long time, but was now using canvas shopping bags instead! What a great idea! It just so happens too that I've been feverously stretching canvas lately for my painting class and have a ton of 2 foot wide canvas pieces laying around. They are pretty much unusable for painting, but they are the perfect size for making shopping bags. It gets even better too! I just bought a wire basket for my bike, so I made the canvas big just the right size to fit into my basket, that way I will never overload myself while shopping. When my bag is full, it's time to check out, simple as that. I think I'm going to make 2 that are a little larger for my mom for mother's day. She shops at aldi all the time and is always spending about 50 cents a trip on plastic bags... what a waste! Another thing, I figured out the I, on average, buy about 4 bags of groceries each week, times that by 52, and that is 208 shopping bags worth of plastic, But no more!

I've really enjoyed the sew along, sorry I can't show you a picture of my finished bag, but I don't have a camera, I will get my friend to take a picture for me and I will post it then (but she's busy developing film for her final project, so it will have to wait).