Did you know that fused plastic bags make for wonderful sewing material? I didn’t until recently and I’ve been having so much fun playing around with it.
One of my goals for 2025 is to waste less and use more of what I already have on hand. And as much as it pains me to admit, plastic bags are something we always have on hand. As hard as I try to bring reusable grocery bags into the store with me, I can’t (or don’t) always do that. Like, when I do grocery pick-up (or simply forget to put the bags back in my dang car).
In the past, I have pulled aside our plastic and taken it to the drop off bins at our local grocery store to recycle. And that has generally worked for us for a long time. But recently, I thought it could be fun to actually do something with them myself. Because why not.
A few years back, I’d stumbled upon a post about fusing plastic bags together to form a sort of fabric with it, but hadn’t really thought much past it being cool. I also didn’t have much time or interest in sewing, so it just kind of got filed into the recesses of my brain.
Fast forward to last week, and my growing obsession with sewing, and the idea started to tickle my brain again. I was excited to try my hand at fusing together plastic and grabbed all of the plastic bags I could find. I ended up using grocery bags, those big mailing bags from retailers, bubble mailers, and food bags like the ones prepared lettuce and/or frozen veggies come in, and got to work ironing.
Once I got into the rhythm, and worked out a few kinks around what plastics were working and which ones weren’t, I found the process quite relaxing and almost meditative.
Speaking of which plastics work, this video shares some tips about the process and said that any plastic that stretches will work. I have generally found that to be true, with one caveat if the plastic is too thin, it can cause the whole thing to shrivel up and pull the other plastic into a rumpled mess. Otherwise, thicker/shinier plastics like or cellophane, the plastic that flowers come wrapped in, or the really shiny gift bags won’t fuse at all. Which is a bummer because those generally have fun patterns on them that would make for cute bags.
What have I been doing with all that fused plastic? I’ve been sewing zipper pouches, of course. And I am officially obsessed with them and wanting to make 8 million more.
I’ve also been tossing around the idea for making a larger reusable grocery bag. I would just have to stitch together a bunch of pieces to come up with something large enough for that, so it’s been put on the back burner while the quicker projects have gone to the front of the line.
Here are some of the bags I’ve made so far:
What do you think? Is sewing with fused plastic bags something you’d like to try your hand at? And if not, is this something you’d like to purchase??
