Plastic bag crochet

How to crochet with plastic bags

After learning to crochet, I decided to try making a washing basket out of some old plastic bags. Here is how it went…

I used a similar technique to cut the plastic bags into yarn as I described in my article about making t-shirt yarn, and simply crocheted it all up into a big oval basket. It took A LOT of bags to finish this one!

I used all kinds of plastic bags – of different colours, sizes, shapes and thicknesses – and so I tried to adjust the width of the yarn to the thickness of the plastic bag to try and give a yarn of a relatively consistant thickness. However, although this technique worked to some degree, there was such a large difference between some of the bags that I still ended up with a yarn of a very variable weight.

I did a bit of reasearch, I found a technique that would work quite well for the thinner bags, as It uses a double thickness of the plastic. However, for thicker bags, I would stick with the t-shirt yarn technique. Here are some quick instructions on how to do it:

My basket turned out pretty well, it seems sturdy, but is a little bit floppy. If I did it again, I would try and make a slightly smaller one, or try and give it a bit more strength by doubling up and/or using thicker yarn.

I thought the plastic was the perfect material for a washing basket, which often contains damp clothes. Even though the plastic bag crochet doesn’t give the cosiest finish, there must be many other practical uses for it: A rug/mat, a bag for the beach, a raincoat, a hat… the possibilities are endless!