"Bedazzling" a commercial bag to make it YOURS

I just submitted a couple of photos to a readers' photo gallery connected to a Seattle Times article about reusable shopping bags. One photo I shared was of one of my knitted plastic bag bags, and the other was of my favorite Trader Joe's bag that I blinged up with beads and eyelets, just to make it MINE. Thought I would share the photos of the Trader Joe's bag here for fun.

I really loved this bag to begin with, maybe because it has my favorite green on it, but mostly because I love its crazy collection of images. It was a bargain at $1.99. And it was crying out to be embellished.

I was flat-out sick at some point after I bought the bag and needed something to do while crashed out on the couch besides knitting (what?!). This bead sewing extravaganza is what resulted.

I sewed beads around the name on both sides of the bag -

And I added beads here and there where the design called out for them -

I added these cool little eyelets where there was a funny grouping of little circles in the design -

There are some similar red circles that I bought red eyelets for but I never got around to adding them. Hmmm...

Here is a link to the article on the Seattle Times website:

Living | Reusable bags: What are you seeing on the streets? Share photos | Seattle Times Newspaper

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Knitting Progress

Baby flame hat is done!

I just hope it fits the baby's head, at least someday. I feel like I was blindly making the hat and just assuming that it fits...not the best feeling.

Here are my do-over socks in Green Envy Red Heart sock yarn ("with aloe"!) -

I was working on these a bit as I rode the bus to and from Mount St. Helens on a field trip with the 8th grade, so I took this picture on the bus. I can't say enough how much I love the colors in this "Green Envy" color combo! I think I will be putting this project on the back burner until later. I picked up several skeins of that same yarn to make a funky-colored baby sweater, and I need to get on that project now.

On a car trip to Spokane and back last week I started a new recycled plastic bag bag. I have finished 10+ inches, and that took more or less 10 hours. I had been TRYING to keep track of how many hours it takes to make one of these, but it's hard to keep track when I work on them in lots of short chunks of time. The long stretch of knitting time on that car ride was the key to getting a clue of the time required. I would guess at this point that it takes about 20 hours to make one of these bags. Or more if you count the time spent cutting up bags.

Lucky for me this spring my sister-in-law brought me a bag-load of colorful bags, and she and our kids cut them up for me! So instead of automatically having stripes of color on the bag as I work with one cut-up plastic bag and then move on to another, I am pulling plastic strips somewhat randomly from the mixed-up collection of strips this time. It's a nice change.

The Bag of Frustration

Thank goodness for the fantastic support of friends and family.  Otherwise, this bag was leading me down a path towards a existential crisis regarding my creativity!  

I wanted to contribute a bag to my dad's Lions Club's annual fund raising auction.  I had my eye on a felted tote bag in a fabulous knitting book I have called "Alterknits" by Leigh Radford.  I knew it would be a great project for using up a bunch of wool odds and ends.  And there was a variation in the book that has handles made out of clear vinyl tubing.  I really liked that handle idea.  Here is a picture of the bag from the book's website, this being the version with felted handles:

 I decided to make the version that is supposed to be about 20"x20" after felting.

So I followed the instructions religiously, following directions for needle size and the number of stitches to cast on.  I did what is a pretty crazy combination of colors for me, but I liked the tropical feel to the mix.  I knit and knit and knit.  Luckily it was mindless knitting on circular needles (all knit stitch), good for movies, car trips, etc.  When I finally reached 35" long as directed, I did a 3-needle bind-off for the bottom seam and here it is:

A long skinny sack.  I was suspcious of how long and skinny it was at this point (like the perfect size for a long, skinny skirt), but I know that knitting shrinks more vertically than horizontally when it is felted...so I wasn't worried.  I finished the bottom as directed so it would be flat like the bottom of a paper grocery bag and popped it into the washing machine to felt.

I was expecting a square bag, so I was a bit shocked to see a most definitely rectangular-shaped felted bag come out of the machine -  

I don't think this picture even does justice to how long and skinny the bag was at this point.  It went from about 34" to 20" long, but I didn't measure the beginning width for a comparison there, darn it!  It ended up being about 13" wide.  Darn!  Not the big tote shape that I had in mind.

I was soooo frustrated with the long skinny shape.  I was ready to cut several inches off the top or the bottom.  But I took it for "show and tell" to my knitting buddies, and a couple of them came up with the idea of simply turning down a cuff - 

The fact that there would be two layers of "fabric" for the handle to attach through seemed like a great bonus.  So that's what I did.  Thanks a ton, my wise and clever friends!!

You probably have no idea how hard it is to find clear vinyl tubing with no permanent lettering on it, and I wouldn't blame you for not knowing.  Take my word for it.  Our local pet store had enough of the right size tubing for one handle.  This tubing had very little writing, but it had a slightly bluish tint which I didn't really like.  I found beautiful crystal clear tubing at McLendon's Hardware, and I spent an afternoon trying to figure out a clever way to remove the lettering on it.  No solvent that we have worked.  I tried different abrasive attachments with the Dremel, and that left long frosted patches instead of print.  So did a little buffing attachment I have for the Dremel.  I thought that maybe if I carefully heated the frosted area up with a little tiny butane torch it might shine it back up, but that made the tubing have a slightly opaque cast.  Grrr.  Finally I tried a pet store further afield and found more of the bluish tubing and decided I'd have to go with that and the little bit of writing it had on it.  Amazingly enough, I discovered in the end that I could rub the lettering off of the pet store stuff with my fingernail.  Crazy. 

The instructions in the "Alterknits" book say to attach the tubing by hand-sewing it onto the bag through a couple of holes, with a button sewn onto the outside of the tubing in the process.  This was not bullet-proof enough for me.  I came upon something to use that is now my new favorite fastener - copper rivets!  

We had some of these in the hardware that we brought home after cleaning out my step-grandpa's basement workshop, but I had no idea what they were for, until now.  Thanks to some awesome help at McLendon's, I realized that these rivets would do the trick to fasten my handles to my bag in a very solid way.  Luckily the rivets come in different lengths, because I had some serious thickness to fasten together.  

Here's what the attachment looks like on the outside -   

 

And here it is on the inside - 

That copper washer and the head of the rivet both are about 1/2" in diameter.  I added larger washers under the copper ones to spread out the pressure and/or keep the little copper washer from pulling through or something.  The coolest thing was that I learned that you use the round end of a ball-peen hammer to flatten out the end of the rivet!  I never knew what you would "traditionally" use that round end of the ball-peen for.  

Finally, I cut and finished a piece of masonite to put in the bottom (on the inside of the bag) to give it a good, solid base.  Here that is, on the outside, obviously - 

Done, and in time for the auction.  Even if it wasn't quite how I had envisioned.  I actually enjoyed the problem solving challenges of this project, except for the fact that it was a bit too down to the wire.

The real frustration/self-questioning came when there were three minutes left in the section of the silent auction that the bag was in.  There was only one bid on the bag, and that was for the starting bid of $15!!  I was flabergasted, after putting all that work into it.  So Eric encouraged me to bid on it and just get it back, which I did after one other bid by that first bidder.  That was a crazy blow to my creative ego.  But luckily my wise women knitting council came through again this Monday and pumped me back up with their outrage and encouragement.  At their suggestion I will either keep the bag for myself, put it up for sale in my (still empty) etsy shop, or donate it to the junior high auction next spring.  

On the other hand, my fused-glass windchime in the auction went for the "buy it now" price of $45, which I think was actually much too low.  (I am terrible at pricing my own work - after it was too late to change the value for these auction donations an awesome woman who works at the glass supply shop suggested a value of $60-$75 for it...)  The time spent on the windchime was a fraction of that spent on the felted bag!  I don't think you can ever get fairly compensated for your labor/time spent on a decent-sized knitting project....

Holiday gift creations

Holiday gift-giving has given me a great reason to spend a bunch of time in the studio recently.  (Hmm...Maybe next year I can work ahead a little, though)  But first, here is a picture of the bag that I showed in its incomplete form in my last post...

That bag is the brightest, most cheerful color combo I've done yet.

Here are two "before" pictures of parts for a windchime that I made for Eric's aunt and uncle.  The light blue glass is from a large Bombay Sapphire gin bottle that Eric's mom gave me knowing I could do something with it.  

Actually, the small pieces are earrings.  The earrings that I attempted to make from the gin bottle glass did not quite work out.  I spent way too much time bending matching curly copper wire shapes to fuse in between the layers of glass for the hanging loop part of the pieces only to find that the gin bottle glass acts diffently than the art glass that I have always used for fusing.  The gin bottle glass melts at a higher temperature, so it takes longer in the kiln.  And it just didn't melt down quit the same.  The wire didn't get completely encapsulated by the glass on the edges.  I'm going to try another batch of earrings, and I will make the pieces of glass a little wider so they actually fuse around/encapsulate the wire. 

 The little green earrings in that grouping turned out really well, though.  

Unfortunately I forgot to take an "after" picture of that windchime, but I hung the long gin bottle pieces from the corners of the white and dark blue square piece. 

My ultimate question/experiment with the gin bottle was to see if the little images of herbs/spices on the sides of the bottle would remain after the glass was fused in the kiln.  I tried to cut long rectangles out of each side of the bottle to get all of the little images on the side in one piece.  That worked on one side, but the other side broke, so I had to roll with it.  The thickness of the bottle varied quite a bit, and it tended to crack where I didn't want it to, of course.  Here's what I put into the kiln:

And here is the final piece:

You can see the images in the glass still, but they are a lot fainter.  I decided to hang the gin glass pieces from a panel of regular white fusing glass.  The whole thing is maybe 16-18" long.  What I realized is that maybe I should get a new blade for the lapidary saw that I have from the jewelry studio where I used to work and try cutting apart a bottle that way instead of scoring and breaking!!  Martinis, anyone?!

Here are a couple more windchime ideas that I came up with:

I love those clear glass hanging pieces with bits of color.  That is a great way to use up small funky bits of "waste" glass.  Those windchimes are probably about 7-8" long, including the wire.

I was cutting some little bits of black glass for one of those windchimes when I suddenly was hit with the idea to make this piece for my dad:  

I guess the little bits of black glass on my table reminded me of the dots and dashes of Morse code.  I LOVE it when a chain-of-thought inspiration hits like that.  It says "dale".  My dad is going to hang it on the wall by his ham radio.

If only I didn't need to sleep....I'd get so much more done!

At this time a couple of weeks ago I was super-busy fusing glass stars as fast as I could for a couple of selling opportunities.  Now I've been switching gears.  I needed to get a sewing job done super fast.  That's done.  Now I'm working on some Christmas gift projects.  

Here's a fused glass copper flame piece before it goes in the kiln...

.....and after.

The copper usually changes to a nice red after going through the heating/fusing process, but these larger pieces of copper obviously don't get hot enough in the center to oxidize or whatever.  I 've come to like that look, especially for a flame.

Here are a couple of recycled plastic bags that I have been working on for a friend - 

I stuck to cool colors for this one, and warm colors for the second, which, as you can see, I am still working on - 

It won't be much longer before it is done.

I am quite excited that I just recently sold three bags to a woman who won/bought the bag that I donated to my dad's Lion's Club auction last spring.  Pretty cool to get some follow-up business from that donation!  She loves her bag and wanted to get more to give as gifts.  Wahoo!  

Today I am going to work on an idea for a fused-glass wind chime to give to Eric's aunt and uncle back east, so I'll take pictures as I go.  I started attempting to cut up a Bombay Sapphire gin bottle yesterday to try to use some strips of it's beautiful light blue glass in a fusing project.  It wasn't as easy as I thought, but I did manage to get four sides....and a couple little cuts on my hand.  Oops!  

Knitting Plastic Bags

I guess it all started with the fact that I like to see materials used in unusual ways. Using a particular material in a new or unusual way, or making a familiar object out of a different media than would be considered "normal". That is so intriguing. I am also interested in the possibility of cutting down throw-away waste to the very smallest amount possible. I believe in reusing and recycling as much as is feasible.  

So one day I saw a project in a knitting book that started me thinking in a new direction. The instructions were for a bath mitt of some sort knitted out of strips of plastic bags tied together. I was inspired to try replicating a plastic grocery bag by knitting a bag out of "yarn" made from strips of used plastic bags. And voila, a new obsession was born!

This is one of the first plastic bags I ever made. I knitted twine along with my plastic "yarn" for extra strength, but I haven't done that again. The plastic is strong enough on its own. This bag went to a school auction.  It found a great home and is well used!

These three were donated to different local auctions:

I submitted a photo of this bag to a Bumbershoot Craft contest but never heard anything back….

These are my two latest bags:

This one is the Blues Bag. Because of the colors, not my mood! I'm just now starting it's opposite- a bag with yellows, orange, pinks, etc.

This bag is made from only bread/bagel/bun bags. 

 I'm so lucky to have lots of buddies giving me their colorful plastic shopping bags to cut up! I hope to someday sell some of these bag creations on the etsy online "store" that I have started to set up….but more on that later.