Well it’s that time again and just wanted to send out warm wishes for a very happy holiday to all.
This is one of my past recycled Christmas card ornaments. You can find the tutorial and details here should you want to recycle some of your Christmas cards this year.
Below is my final batch of mini Christmas stockings for 2020. These 6 inch Christmas stockings will go towards next year’s stocking drive for the Warmth for Warriors organization.
You can find the free crochet pattern for the cuffed mini Christmas stockings
Got plastic bags? Want to make a cute little shoulder bag? Well grab your crochet hook and those bags and lets crochet a mini shoulder bag purse out of those plastic sacks.
This recycled crafting project used about 15 brown Safeway retail sacks, cut 1 inch wide and assembled using the looping method to create plarn. The finished purse measures 6.5 inches wide by 5 inches tall with a 36 inch long strap. The strap can be knotted as shown for a shorter strap or kept longer for wearing across the body.
Here is free mini shoulder bag pattern.
Need a quick and cute homemade Christmas gift idea? Here is a crocheted Christmas towel topper topped off with a jingle bell for the closure button. This is a double layered towel which requires no cutting or sewing and works up very fast.
Just fold your kitchen towel in half and use this picture tutorial to show you how to crochet single stitches along the top edge through both layers. I will admit that this one row of single crochet stitches is a bit tough but once you have the base row completed, your towel topper will fly to the finish.
The waffle stitch towel topper pattern is free and found here.
Year after year my homemade towel toppers are always popular with people and they make wonderful donations for charity craft fairs too. I have several other free towel topper patterns and you can check them
Just finishing up this year’s mini Christmas stocking drive for Warmth for Warriors. Here are a few of the final ones I crocheted. I call these my candy cane stockings. I used this pattern for the 6 inch stockings but did work in both loops. I crocheted 2 rounds in each color and just carried the yarn colors inside the stocking to hide my color changes. Works out well and you can’t notice the color changes too much.
We had a very successful year of making mini Christmas stockings for the troops through Warmth for Warriors. In case you aren’t familiar with the organization, you can read more about them here. Last year over 3100 stockings were handcrafted and filled with little goodies for our troops. They were shipped to military troops as a small token of our appreciation to bring a bit of holiday cheer to them for Christmas. We haven’t gotten the final tally for the stockings made this year but I do know it was another great year.
Now we are busy handcrafting
Happy Halloween from My Recycled Bags! Just wanted to send out a greeting wishing everyone a happy and safe Halloween during these usual times. I know this isn’t a typical year by any means but hoping you can enjoy the day with your family.
Here is an recycled Halloween treat cup that you and your kids might enjoy making. It uses a yogurt container, some yarn and construction paper to decorate. Full details including some other recycled crafting ideas can be found here.
Happy Halloween!
I started working on some Christmas gifts and recently came across this pretty Christmas tree dishcloth pattern. The pattern features crocheted bobbles for the tree design and edging on the dishcloth.
One thing I found after I crocheted the first dishcloth was that the side edging had different stitch counts on either side of the cloth. One side had 2 stitches and the other had 3 (see photo below). I thought I made an error in the pattern but after frogging the pattern a few times and checking other crafters’ pictures, I found that all the dishcloths had this discrepancy.
So I set out to see if I couldn’t make both sides even and came up with some changes to the original dishcloth pattern.
Details on my version of the original crochet pattern:
Chain 34 and work 32 stitches across.
I crocheted this messenger book bag from recycled plastic Safeway bags. People ask me all the time how many bags it takes to crochet different projects of mine. I did a calculation on this project as I crocheted it. I found that I used about 3 bags for two full rounds on the crocheted body of the bag. Therefore I used about 39 bags to crochet the main body of this book bag. Overall I recycled about 60 plastic bags to crochet the messenger book bag.
I cut my plarn about 1 inch wide using the looping method to create my plastic bag yarn.
I crocheted 26 rows in half double crochet (HDC) before starting the flap. For the flap, I crocheted 12 rows in HDC before starting the decreases for the tapered flap. I crocheted a total of 25 rows and then added a edging of single crochet stitching around the edges of the flap. By adding the single crochet stitches, it helps even out the edges and makes for a smooth finish to the flap.
I crocheted my strap even on 6 stitches wide for a 35 inch long strap.
The original crochet pattern for the messenger bag is found here. It’s a free plarn crochet pattern and I just tweaked it a bit to make this smaller book bag of 14″ wide by 11.5″ long. The original crochet pattern makes a
I have been busy crocheting more hats. In my last post I wrote about a new all front post brimmed hat I tried. I really liked how it came out and crocheted this one for my grandson.
The hat was worked seamless after row 2 which makes it nice looking without the normal joining showing on the hat. Photo below shows how it looks without joining except for FPDC rows.
I want to share a new twist on an old hat pattern of mine. My original ribbed hat pattern features a hat band that alternates between front post double crochet (FPDC) and back post double crochet (BPDC).
For this new hat band, basically you want to follow my original crochet pattern for the ribbed hat but stop at about 7 inches in length while working the half double crochet (HDC) rounds. Depending on the yarn, I find that I crochet about 18-19 rounds of HDC to reach 7 inches. Then it’s time to work all FPDC for 5 rounds. The final length of this crocheted FPDC beanie is about 8 inches.
Here is a closeup of the FPDC hat band. It does tighten up the hat and makes a nice finished brim.
One last comment about the brown hat. I tried a new idea so I didn’t have to do a Ch-2 and join with a slip stitch at the end of each round. You don’t have to use this method but it does help the hat look as it doesn’t have the noticeable joining seam on each round. Here is what I did.
At round 3, I worked a SC into the next HDC stitch to start the round. Then I just crocheted using HDC stitches to round 18 all without joining or the Ch-2 which leaves a seam. On round 18, I did a sc and slip stitch to join the last rounds together. Then Ch-2 and worked FPDC for 5 rounds for the hat brim with the typical joining.
Here is one other hat style idea to share.
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