Tangled Thread - Tips, Trick and Tutorials in Sewing & Stitching

Needlework? not quite…

by Deb on April 12th, 2006

I was browsing Kevin Humphrey’s Simply Thrifty blog the other day, and came across an entry on Crocheted Plastic Bag Bags. I have seen such an idea before, but neglected to bookmark the page, and have just been too lazy to go looking again. Kevin has a few links about the bags, including one which is a pattern/how-to.

Neato! I thought. And proceeded to cut bags and connect loops and find the largest crochet hook I could. Not quite large enough, but I figured it would do. I also figured that even though the crochet short-hand lingo looked like an alien language, I would pick it back up in no time at all (like riding a bike!! yeah!).

This image of my second attempt at creating what was supposed to be the flat circular bottom of the bag shows just how deluded I was.

Obviously anyone who wants to crochet an actual BAG should perhaps take the time to look up what all the short-hand means. Despite that snafu, I have to say I am not really too impressed with the ease of crocheting with plastic. It sucks. The biggest reason I have a miniature hat instead of a flat bottom is that I couldn’t get my hook to go through the loops multiple times to give me the proper number of stitches to work off of (which probably relates to using a hook a size too small). I’m thinking of picking up some yarn at the store (or possibly unravelling a sweater that is lying abandoned in my room), and trying the pattern with a material I’m more familiar with and then giving the plastic another go (using a larger hook too! Maybe one of those giant ones for kids).

That people can crochet with plastic, and have it turn out looking so amazing, just astonishes me. It did not seem like such an impressive thing (other than the cool factor, and that the bags look really nice and functional) before I’d made my sorry attempt at one of my own.

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