Sew Your Own Shopping Bags for Produce Fruit and Vegetabes – Very Easy!

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Using reusable shopping bags has been the trend for years now when carrying your groceries home. But have you noticed that some stores are encouraging you to bring cloth bags for the produce too? I have seen this trend at my local bulk store.

Of course, if you ‘ve been going to the farmers market, cloth produce bags makes so much sense. They often have the container of plums set out and then toss them into a plastic bag for you. They don’t even weigh it. Now that I have made these bags, I want to go the extra distance to the Saturday farmers market!

Fabrics you could use for this project include… cotton, curtain sheers, tulle, sheer nylon….consider though that if your going to a store that will be weighing your produce the heavier the fabric the more you will be paying each shopping trip. Choose lightweight!

On my first trip to the fabric store I was shocked at the cost of nylon….$20 /meter?!? Youch! So I purchased a meter of tulle (wedding veil and tutu sheer fabric) costing a low, low $1.99 per meter. This seemed sensible so I could make them without thinking about how costly any errors will be. I do plan to make them in a few fabrics though including nylon so I can see how different materials hold up with wear and tear. For today’s project I’ll stick with 1 metre (or 1 yard) of  toule and 2 meters (or yards) of thin white cording. You could also use ribbon. This is enough to make 4 or 5 bags depending on the size you choose to make.

The first step is to decide on your bag size preference. Grab your ruler and eyeball what these sizes would look like.

6×9, 8×10, 10×13, 12×18, 18×24

Add an inch for the fold over for the string or ribbon to go through. I want to try a bunch of options…. but for this post I will keep it simple. This one in the photo ended up being 11 inches by 12.5 when finished. I’m not very picky about the sizes-as long as it is big enough to fit 6 apples I’m happy.

Fold the top edge over 1/2 inch and sew across. This will form the drawstring casing to tie the bag up.

Pin the fabric together-this is slippery stuff- and sew around the sides and bottom.  Start and finish sewing just under the casing to the bottom of the bag. I used a straight stitch, then trimmed it fairly close to the stitch and then sew around again with a zig zag stitch to tuck the ends in. If you are using nylon or sheer curtains they will fray if you don’t zigzag.

Attach a safety pin to the end of your ribbon or string and pull through. Tie a knot at the ends.

 

Attach a safety pin to the end of your ribbon or string and pull through. Tie a knot at the ends.

 

 

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