Green is the thing for the environment and quilters

Yes, quilters were one of the leaders in recycling. I know we love our new fabrics and I'm not one to complain about spending money on beautiful fabrics that make our quilts look so special. We are mostly threads per square inch kinda gals and understand Oprah's obsession with sheets. Well, guess what, it's pretty similar today with our quilting fabrics...I digress, it's just to easy talking fabric.

Quilters were one of the first recyclers and today we can still carry on this tradition and help the environment in so many ways. One such way that I'm helping my daughter out with is the Reusable shopping bags-now, we've got to come up with a new word(s) to describe our green, environmentally friendly bags...any suggestions?

So, here's the instructions for the ????? that people, should use to buy their groceries with. Also, it will help to save money, cause if you think ahead of time that you only have this much room to carry things home in, you can't buy more than a bags worth of food, or whatever. I plan to take mine to Paducah, if I get to go this year. First, open a Walmart shopping bag and cut the seams.
Lay out about a half yard of material fold in half lengthwise. Cut with the pattern bottom on the fold. Basically all you are cutting is the handles.

Clean Finish around the handles and "mouth" of the bag. Iron the clean finishing and bag-ironing is the secrect to not having the happy hands at home look on anything.

With right sides together sew both sides of the bag and handles I made knots often and made double seams-remember this is a reusable bag, so you can't add too many stitches to hold it together. Make a triangle pleat at the bottom of the bag about 1 1/2 inches from the corner-this gives you the fullness of the bag. Double seam here as well.

For the handles, make a pleat by bring the side in on itself and sew to secure. Voila! you are finito! A job well done and you just saved the planet. I used up mainly old drapery material that had been hanging around for quite a while, but, I think this is the perfect project for the sturdy material. I still have my holy fabric, you know, the kind you like to fondle and dream of a quilt that it will be in.

Rest well, my friend and go work on any other project you already have started, you earned it.