Juice pouch tote bag

For the past few weeks I've been saving the empty juice pouches my kids create on a daily basis. I got a little obsessive, constantly peering into garbage cans around my house to make sure none had gotten throw away! Yesterday we had an activity at our church that offered a demonstration on how to make a bag from these pouches. I've been curious about what it'd look like, and ended up being really happy with the outcome! I brought about 30 pouches and was able to make a nice big tote from them, though I did have to borrow 8 from my instructor to make my handles. Anyhow, here's a peek at the process:

Empty bags need to be slit at the bottom to rinse & dry properly.

I opened them up and let them stand overnight to dry, then tossed them in the dryer on low for a few minutes to get the last of the moisture out. Happily, the dryer also did a nice job of flattening them out again for me!

Overlapping the side edges of each pouch then zig-zagging them together makes your front & back panels. The side & bottom panels are made by overlapping the top & bottom edges of the pouches, then zig-zagging.

Here's the body of the bag all stitched together.

I made handles by stitching 4 pouches end to end then folding them lengthwise into thirds and stitching down the middle. I chose to have the silver side showing instead of the graphics side.

All done! Handles were attached with double rows of zig-zagging to make sure they stay put.

There are plenty of good tutorials out there to follow if you want to give this a try. It was super fast and easy. The only semi-tricky part I came across was getting the bottom panel stitched on, but this really wasn't all that hard. Here is a link to the instructions we were provided. Here's another good one. Go have a look at Betz White's blog for a very cute idea for more interesting handles! I'm going to have to try plastic bag fusing next!!