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Mar 17, 2012

New Product Testing

(Note: Please pardon the not totally awesome photography contained in this post. These were taken quickly with my cell after whipping up the sample.)
I am always thinking of new possibilities for Lynifer to make and sell and all that fun stuff. One thing that I have had on my mind a lot in the past, but then let slide, was reusable produce bags.
Reusable everything is big. For some families reusing/recycling is the name of the game. Reusable diapers, Reusable grocery bags, recycling, gardening, composting, etc. You name, they find a way to rethink, reuse, and recycle. I like to try to reuse and upcycle as much as possible. I am trying to instill that mentality in LJ and BG too.
Okay, now I guess I should get back to the point of this post.
I use cloth grocery bags as much as I can. I keep them in my car to try to remember them when I make those quick trips to the store. One thing that has grown to drive me nuts are the plastic bags for the produce. If I can do without, I do. Well, now for those times when really I need a bag for my fresh food, I can whip out a produce bag.
Now, this is my first one, and it is going to be in a bit of testing. There are many things that I make that really never end up making into the Lynifer line-up.
Now, like many of you may know by now, I like to reuse what I have around the house/sewing room already instead of getting specialty fabrics at the store all of the time. This bag is no different. The inpiration for this bag came from a great little tutorial I found through Pinterest. The blog is, Delia Creates. While I have a million and one t-shirts hanging around my sewing room, I wanted to try something that would not add that much weight to the final product. That is one thing that many people are worried about with reusable produce bags for store shopping. As you may be able to see from the picture, this is a fairly sheer material (you can still vaguely see the ruler lines through two layers of fabric). Do you know what I used?
Sheer curtains! I had a curtain laying around from when I still lived with my parents. In its previous life it helped make a separate space for me, under my loft bed. I don't have use for a curtain this size in my house (let alone just one curtain like this). That is how it came to stay in my sewing stash. I knew for some time now that it might work nicely for a produce bag, but I wasn't sure how to really do it.
The above link to the tutorial I found really helped me over that hump. How simple is it to stitch up the side and bottom of the bag and then do this to it?
After sewing the bag, I used my scissors to cut slits in it. This helps it to expand when the produce is in it. I did the same thing for the handle as well, except for the handle I took a lighter to it to seal the raw edges of the material.

Have you ever considered using a reusable produce bag at the store? If you haven't, would you once knowing it was an option and could get them at a good price?

I am not sure where this bag and design will go from here, but I wanted to share it all with you. What are you thoughts on it?

1 comment:

Mandee said...

Very creative! I'm all for reusable products, however knowing me, I would probably forget to take the bags into the store with me! lol

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