Woman on a mission

DID YOU KNOW? 1 MILLION plastic bags are consumer PER MINUTE!!! globally


That is insane!!

For quite some time I've felt guilty about all the plastic bags we use. We have a few cheapo cloth ones from the grocery store that I always forget to bring. Since I love to sew, I've thought many times that I should use some cute fabric and sew up a bunch of shopping bags to have in the van for all types of shopping needs. Yesterday I did a Google search to find some free patterns and stumbled across a really cool website called Morsbags. Besides having a free bag pattern, this website has a mission to eradicate (as much as possible) plastic bag use. It is based in the UK and the really cool thing is that it has a tracker to keep data on how many bags have been made through their site. You can set up what's called a "pod" and get a group of friends together for assembly-line bag making. Then you log in your number of bags. And here's the totally cool part: you arrange to go to a local store and pass out your bags to customers FOR FREE to promote reusable bag use. That is my favorite part. I was motivated enough to try stitching up a bag last night using their free pattern. They state that you can sew it in 20 minutes when you are organized :0). It took me about 35 minutes (not including cutting out the pieces), but I'm sure I could make future bags faster now that I've done one. I didn't make it to their exact specifications because I only had a 1/2 yard of the 2 fabrics I used.

Using fabric bags has to become a habit for me. For example, this morning my little boy and I made a quick trip to the grocery store. As I was in the check-out line I realized that my lovely new fabric bag was hanging on the door at home and of no use to us whatsoever!! UGH! As soon as I got home with my (gasp!) 2 plastic bags, I tried fitting their contents into my 1 fabric bag. They totally fit. I am already planning to make up several more for myself soon. I found another pattern that I'd like to try using a pillowcase. It looks WAY easy.........and it makes me want to immediately head to the thrift store to look for some cool pillowcases.

My new "chicken" bag with "egg" handles. I was going to use these fabrics to make napkins, but decided this was a better use.

The handles and all the seams are reinforced making these bags really sturdy.

I am thinking about starting a local Morsbags pod. If anyone locally is interested in joining me, please let me know. You do NOT need sewing experience...........when we assemble bags we will need people to cut out pieces and iron.

Interestingly, the city of San Francisco, California banned the use of plastic bags in supermarkets and large pharmacies over 2 years ago. I am not sure if other cities have since followed suit.

Lunchbox napkins

I can finally check something off my to-do list that has been tugging at me for about a year now. I just finished sewing some cloth napkins for my oldest son's lunchbox. I really hate to send anything that gets thrown away. He has a zippered lunch bag and carries his sandwich, pretzels, carrots, etc. in reusable containers. His school is really into recycling (he attends a private Montessori elementary school) and composting. Any compostable leftovers from lunches are added to the school's compost heap in their garden. Love that! The only thing I was always sending were paper napkins. Not anymore...........this year he will have a cloth napkin each day that can easily be washed and reused again and again. I just used cotton fabric and cut out squares (finished they are about 13 inches). I sewed 2 together right sides together and left an opening for turning. Then I pressed them and edge-stitched them which finished off the opening. I made four so far and have fabric to make a few more. His school only offers hot lunch once a week, so he takes his lunch the other four days. I am planning to make some with different seasonal fabrics both to send with him and to use on our table at home. It's really so much more pleasant to wipe your mouth with cloth than with paper. I'm happy to have this done because most of my "spare" time these next few weeks will be devoted to getting my Montessori classroom up and running again. The time for completing summer projects is fading fast!

If I ever open my Etsy shop, I'm thinking about selling sets of these. Would any of you who don't sew consider buying them? Just curious.