How to sew a shopping bag?

A fabric shopping bag is very eco-friendly – it helps reduce the amount of plastic around us. Did you know that you can sew it yourself? It is very easy!

The fabric shopping bag is ecological and practical

Making your own shopping bag has many advantages:

• you can conveniently carry your shopping from the store to your home,
• you don’t have to buy plastic bags, which immediately tear,
• we will be able to use the shopping bag many times

Cotton shopping bags

A cotton bag is very easy to make yourself. Its advantages are easy availability of material, low price and many available colors or patterns. We recommend thick and densely woven fabrics, e.g. 272 g/m2. Then the shopping bag will be very durable

Shopping bags made of canvas

You can also make a shopping bag out of natural canvas. You can use a more specialized material in the form of laminated linen canvas, which has better parameters in terms of strength and resistance to moisture. It is also quite rigid.

Stylish shopping bag

Shoppingbags nowadays are used not only to carry purchases, but they are also an element of styling. More and more women resign from traditional bags in favour of cotton ones. It is worth to have a few of them in a drawer and wear them alternately, matching the styling

Shopping bag with an interesting pattern

Ahand-made shopping bag should be personalized. Let’s depart from standard patterns in favor of those that correspond well with our style. Especially trendy are bags in metallic colors – silver, gold and copper. Patterns imitating animal skin such as snake skin or leopard skin look good, too

Shopping bag with an imprint

Stylish shopping bags with DIY print can be also obtained by making a digital print on them. This technique gives a lot of possibilities: you can reproduce a high-resolution image and choose any motif for printing. It does not have to be a floral motif suggested by the fabric manufacturer, but, for example, a reference to your favourite movie, a quote or a meme. Fabrics recommended for printing are:

• gabardine – thicker and densely woven, will take well even a large printing area,
• cotton sofia – more delicate, well suited for spot printing on small surfaces.

How to sew a shopping bag? Step by step instructions

Sewing a shopping bag is not difficult and absolutely everyone is able to do it. You just need to gather materials and show a little patience.

Bag from one piece of material

The easiest solution is to sew a bag from one piece of material. Thanks to this, we will not have to sew the bottom. Just follow 3 simple steps

1. Cut out a rectangle from the fabric. The sides should have the dimensions equal to the width of the bag and its double length
2. Fold the cut out fabric right side in. Sew side edges together
3. Sew on the handles

Bag made of two pieces of material

The advantage of sewing a bag from two pieces of material is that we can choose two completely different colors, and even textures. Thanks to this our bag will be more interesting, maybe even designer. How to go about it?

1. Cut out two fabric rectangles of equal size.
2. Fold them together so that their right edges meet.
3. Sew three edges together using straight stitch.
4. Then iron them.
5. Turn up the top edge twice.
6. You have to stitch it as well

Sewing bag handles

It remains to sew the bag handles so that they are comfortable and durable. You can do this by using different materials. The jute rope will give it a nautical look, which is very interesting. However, you can do it simpler, using leftover material, which you sew to the inner edges of the bag