Upcycle t-shirt in draw string bag

Got a T-shirt that you cannot or don’t wear anymore?

You can make a handy drawstring bag easily from an old t-shirt in just a few minutes. There’s minimal stitching, as you are making the most of the hems and seams by using the existing sleeve hem to contain the drawstring. From one t-shirt you can get up to 4 bags.

To make a single cotton t-shirt, 2,700 litres of fresh water are required according to estimates, enough to meet one person’s drinking needs for 2.5 years. It takes a lot of water to produce textile, plus land to grow cotton and other fibres. So we really need to start valuing our clothes and using them for their lifetime rather than throwing them away.

Make the drawstring bag

Cut the sleeve and part of the body from the T-shirt. It up to you how far you go up to the collar. Then Square the sleeve off into a rectangle. (Looking at the photo below you don’t have to trim the righthand side and that means you don’t need to sew along this seam.)

Take the cut t-shirt sleeve and place the ‘right sides together’. This means that what will be the inside of the bag is facing out (on the outside) – and pin around the edges.

Starting below the existing hem line, sew down the sides and across the bottom (as shown by the blue line on the picture).

Inserting the drawstring

Snip through the existing hem line on both sides (if you haven’t already done so).

You can use T-shirt yarn for the drawstring, ribbon, or cord. How to make the t-shirt yarn is very simple and from any tshirt body cut strips 2.5 cm wide. Give them a stretch, and they should curl up to make T-shirt ‘yarn’. Make two strips.

To thread the yarn through, attach a safety pin to one end of a yarn, and thread it through the existing sleeve hem all the way around. Tie a knot.

Repeat the process with the second piece of yarn, threading through from the other side of the bag.

You have made a t-shirt drawstring bag!

Jazz it up

If you are feeling creative you could jazz up it up with a piece of colourful fabric, some buttons, ribbon or whatever takes your fancy. Or, instead of T-shirt yarn for the string, you could use some colourful ribbon.

Making more drawstring bags

From one t-shirt you should be able to get 4 bags, 1 from each sleeve and 2 from the body. For the rest of the t-shirt, you can t-shirt yarn, use for patches for clothes or stuffing for other projects.

If you like this project and want to make more pop to your local charity shop and they usually have a great selection of colourful t-shirts you can pick up cheaply. 

The possibilities of what you can use the bag for is endless:

• Keeping sewing bits together
• Use it for wrapping for presents. They get an extra gift.
• Storage for clothes
• Reusable fruit and veg bags at the supermarket