I FINALLY made those reusable grocery bags

Since I started my WIP project sidebar on the blog, there's been ONE project sitting there, right at the top.  Those reusable grocery bags.  I got excited when I bought the fabric by the pound and started searching for tutorials on how to make reusable grocery bags.  I ended up making 3 pleated purses and 9 reusable grocery bags plus I still have one VERY large piece of fabric left and lots of scraps.  Not bad for $30 worth of decorator fabric!

Well, I ended up bookmarking almost a dozen of the tutorials I found.  Seriously, google "making reusable bags"  There's  A LOT out there.  And I decided to visit each tutorial and decide which one would be the easiest for me to make.  Some tutorials required I make a pattern or print a pattern or use a plastic grocery bag as a pattern ... but really, I wasn't interested in all that.  I wanted something quicker.  I ended up choosing the one that looked the easiest and even then, I didn't follow it exactly. The EASY TUTORIAL I used.

Anyway, I deviated by sewing 3in gussets (like with the pleated purse) instead of doing that weird folding thing.  That means that my bags have fabulous depth and can stand up on their own, but it also meant I had to cut handles into the bag another way than the tutorial said.  But that was easy to figure out and I really think the gusset way was much easier than the weird folding way that I struggled with for about 30 minutes before decided I needed another plan!

I followed the directions and didn't bother with a "finished" look.  I just zigzagged around all the raw edges and reinforced around where the handles met the bag.  The zigzag is enough to prevent fraying and with a grocery bag, that's good enough for me.

After I switched to gussets, the bags only took about 20 minutes to put together start to finish. And because my fabric was all different sizes I started working with the size I had instead of cutting down the fabric to the exact measurements.  So some are deeper, some wider, some taller.  I like them like that.

The bags. Well, 7/9 of them.  Two are filled with tomatoes in the fridge!

Husband holding the tomato bags for a better view

Now all I have to do is to remember to keep these bad boys in the car so we can actually use them and stop bringing home dozens of plastic bags every week that we only use to put dirty cat litter in!