Recycled bags

Since I started riding a racer bike again, I was looking for a messenger style bag that would hold properly while I ride. A friend put me on to Bagaboo, a guy in Hungary who does well made bags at a decent price, as well as doing a custom design. At the same time, he sent me a link from Make Magazine- on how to make your own messenger bag (using this design under creative commons ), but from fusing together old crappy plastic bags. Also found out about Seattle company Alchemy Goods, who make bags, wallets, etc from old bike tyres and vinyl.

The original designer, Eeio, used old banner vinyl, which is a great idea if you can get it as rubbish or misprints from a local printer. Somehow, the Kinko's near my house had none, but I was attracted by the idea of making use of the bags that inevitably pile up (even if you reuse, there's still newspaper sacks, vegetable bags, and so on). And also, it's free.

I found a place called Pull-A-Part (pay a dollar to have a go at hundreds of cars sitting around) to get a few old car seatbelts (a la Chrome style, handy and flashy), and from a thrift store got a few old bags with clips, straps, etc that might come in use. I went and bought some heavy velco as well - so spending 15 US dollars on the old bags and velco, then the seatbelts were 8 bucks each (even though I had done all the effort to find em, those guys must make a killing)

Fusing the bags is kinda fun (I suppose ironing is a novelty for me); I found I had to put my iron a bit hotter than they had suggested (they said polyester/rayon, I needed more oomf to really seal the bags, though you can definitely tell when it's too hot and they whole thing wrinkles up or gets holes in it). The thin, clear bags like newspaper covers and vegetable bags actually fuse the best, and best to get a ply of at least 10 layers for a durable material, if not more. (After a bit of wear, I'd say aim for at least 12.) I found the shitty target/supermarket bags fused the worst, often coming apart later as well. The thicker, nicer bags that usually have some facy design on them can be used to substitute for some of the thinner bags layering, and also are good material to think about for extras like pockets. (Just remember to sew on the pockets BEFORE you stitch the whole thing together!) and like they say, make sure to ventilate cuz melting plastic ain't nice.

So, learning to use the sewing machine, and starting with the Make design; I made a few changes- I wanted some material leading to the buckle straps so it fit better than just a cloth strap all the way around. So I made 'wings', like in Eeio's end results, to go over the left shoulder and around the right side, and stitched these directly into the side seams. I ended up with this one, also stiching a pocket on the outside; the main body's 9 inches high, 14 inches wide. Use an 80 or 90 thick sewing needle, and with the seatbelt material go carefully!

Turns out the wings are (surprise surprise) a weak point- so if you want to make them, probably best to make it part of the same piece of material as the back of the bag, and make sure it's the strongest part!

Though my intention had been to make a smaller one (my girlfriend wanted a bag, but not one of the huge camel back ones), I had pretty much followed the size suggested by Make and it seemed a little -too- small. So I set out to make a bigger one, this time only using brown bags, a uniform thickness (10 ply) and letting the size I wanted determine the rest of the bits (and ignoring the golden rule Eeio sets to hit); 11 inches high, 15 inches wide. This time I stitched the underam cross strap into the side seam as well, to make sure it held better

By this time I was in the mode, so using the same style design and some of the spare seatbelt material made a good sturdy shopping/handy bag for me ma:

Then finally I made one more,a similar size to the brown one, but with a few more interesting bag designs to try and integrate, and a tiny bit wider (17 in.). I had a bit of an orientation problem stitiching the whole thing inside out and had to re-do a few bits (the fused plastic isn't as mendable as fabric...), but got there in the end

The seatbelts a front buckles are quite heavy, but acts as a balance as the plastic material is quite light. I haven't puched these to their limit yet, but they seem durable enough to hold up to 5kg respectfully...I'll update this if they self-destruct spectacularly, but have held up great so far! If anything, it'll be my stitiching and not the material. So, if I can do it anyone can, check out the links and have a go, use those bags more than just once...