Today I got to work. I made 4 grocery totes and 2 veggie totes. I only ended up using the king sized dark blue sheet. I made four totes out of it but I think there's enough fabric left for a fifth if I wanted this white piping to show. Meh. I might make another one tomorrow if I get bored.



Brian made the comment, "doesn't look like it'll hold much" when I was showing off my handiwork so I stuffed some groceries in. I managed to fit a box of cereal, pancake mix, rice, some potato chips, oatmeal cookie mix, a bottle of wine, a "bear" of honey, and a large jar of peanut butter in there all at once and still have room for a few more bags of gravy mix if I so chose. Here's an "action shot":



Here they all are folded up so cutely.



My favorite so far though are the veggie totes. I'd seen at least one other tutorial on the web somewhere that used tulle but I figure that would be too thin to really hold anything. I thought this fabric I got at the store a few years ago for curtains (that particular project never came to fruition by the way) would be great since it has holes but is woven closer together than tulle, more like linen. So, I dug out my stash and cut off a few pieces.



It's a simple drawstring bag but I've added a small plastic square to the front piece. You see, the grocery store here and the last few I had been at back home, now have these new machines where you place your produce on a scale and enter in the code and it prints out a sticker to use as a barcode at the register when you check out. I decided to place a small square on the sheet to stick this sticker to. I was originally going to use some clear vinyl "fabric" (the kind people sometimes use over tablecloths or old ladies cover their furniture in) but the fabric store didn't have any that I could find and I couldn't find the few yards I have of it in my stash somewhere. I ended up improvising with an old page protector. One side had gotten written on top of, so like a carbon sheet, it had transferred a "scratched" image of the original message. It was pretty useless as a page protector now since the writing made the page not so clear to read anymore. The other side was still perfectly fine, so I cut it into 2 squares and sewed each onto the fabric. Yes, it is crooked... I'm a tad impatient and didn't measure or pin or anything.



Originally, I was going to put coordinating colored ribbon on several bags. Orange ribbon for oranges perhaps, yellow for bananas, red for apples, green for veggies and so on. I was browsing the ribbon section though and came across this DARLING printed wire-edged ribbon that had a whole bunch of fruits pictured on it. It was PERFECT! I wrapped it around the seam I had made and sewed it down to give it a smidge more durability and to add color.





I added the thin cording and a drawstring anchor-piece and voila! A cute and functional veggie bag. ^_^ I'm very pleased with them and can't wait to make more for myself.



Cost so far:

Ribbon - Approx. $1/meter (about 2 meters used) $2.00
Drawstring Anchor - Approx. $1 (2 used) $2.00
Freezer Bags - $2.00/bag (2 used) $4.00
______
Total $8.00

I'm planning on making some for myself too out of this fabric:



It's an upholstery-type fabric I believe, rather thick like denim, so I figure I'll have to make the bags slightly bigger to compensate for the thicker fabric. I'm also planning on topstitching them for a more "finished" look.