Plastic Bag Crafts

Hi, I'm Carol Duvall and we have a packed show for you today. First it’s a blast from the past as we recycle something you have by the hundreds. Then we're going to take a sneak peek in the home life of Lisa Pevelka. And lastly we’ll show you how to weave your way to this striking bead and wire beauties. So much to do, so little time, we better gets started. Welcome to the show, and it is indeed a blast from the past. One that doesn't seem that don’t want to go away. All of these things, we have everything from a throw rug to a numbered totes, to a water bottle cover, to a doll, well they all have one thing in common. Do you have any clue? Of course you do, a lot of you. It’s all crocheted or knit plastic. Now back in the early 70’s, when I first learned about this when it was very, very popular, we used bread wrappers. That’s why this is so colorful, because it was so many different kinds of bread wrappers. In fact, Mrs. Johnson who sent this throw rug to me at the time, and this was one of the smallest rugs that she had made. She made bunches of them, big ones. Said that she used to get bread wrappers from her friends all over the country. Now of course she don’t have to go any place for help, because everything else these days is made from these plastic bags. Well, one trip to the grocery store and we come home with a room full of these things. So you don’t need to send to anybody for help. But all of these different things have been sent in by viewers or made by me. And it does seem to be something’s. I sit back in the 70’s we made them, I read a big article on a popular women’s magazines all about in the mid 80’s, I did this something on the home show in the early 90’s. Never got so much mail. And then the later 90’s and on through today, I'm getting things from you. So we thought we better do something with the crocheted or knit plastic. And everybody has their own themes, their own ideas too. And by the way, I should mention the lady that I think does win the prize for everything. And this is, well, now I can't find her name. This is Mildred Lalecher of Lydon, New Jersey. And look what she’s done. She crocheted a skirt and a vest, and she's carrying a purse. All crocheted from plastic bags, and I got a friend Janet too. Everybody has their own theory and ideas on how to cut these bags. Of course, sometimes you can get these great big ones. And these are a little bit heavier than the ones we get at the grocery store. These are great to use. But, generally speaking, as those grocery stores bags we have so many of them. So how do we start? Well, we’ll show the different theories we have. First of all, at least that’s the way I do it. By sort of getting it out like this, smoothing it out like this. And then cutting. Now fortunately, they are very easy to cut. We start by cutting off the top like this. Incidentally too, going on the internet, you can find all sorts of information, patterns too. And cut off the bottom. So that what we have here is a tube of plastic. Theory number one, we're just going to cut rings and actually I just do it this way. Make the cutting a little easier. Whether you cut strips one inch, two inches, however. Two inches is good. Most of you I think that you sent me information on using one inch strip, but I cut more of these faster if I make it to two inches. And the size crochet hook that you use depends on the effect you want or how wide you cut your strips. Anyway, we have a bunch of loops. And the way you join them to get enough to crochet with is simply using the old large slip knot. And this one sometimes can be a little tricky because pulling that plastic through the plastic sometimes doesn’t. Basically that’s what you do. And you take the next loop and you pull it through there and you pull the next one through and keep on doing that till you have yourself a whole ball of these. Okay. Cut number two, this is also where we cut off the top and the bottom. Fortunately it cuts very easily. And now this is kind of the method that we used to use when we cut up the bread wrappers. And it takes a little longer, but you end up with one long loop, one long strand rather. Start in angled down to whatever width you want, say two inches. And then you just keep going around and around and around and around. And you’ll end up with a long strip, its two inches wide. And then you still will have to join it to the next two inch wide strip, how do you do that? Well you can just tie them together in overhand knot, square knot, or frankly I never knotted them all. Just butt the two ends up to each other, I mean overlapped them, crochet them. Put this over, plastic sticks. Here the one I just learned about, and Pat Hewes of Fountain Valley, California. Edith Solomon of Valley Glenn California, each send us projects and this is how they said they cut theirs. This is a dandy. Edith incidentally is the lady who sent us the water bottle holder, and she also shared her directions with us too so that we could put them on the website for you. Okay, start out again by cutting off the top and the bottom. And it’s going to like the other one, but you cut it differently. Then, flatten this out. You know, for the first time tonight, while crocheting this side down, I just tried my knitting on it. And I really quite like that. Okay. See if I can get this in the remaining time. Flatten it out. Now then we're going to start folding, and I’ll do it wider than I was going to. You don’t have to fold the accordion at all. You can just keep folding it like this, be sure that you leave a good ½- 3/4 of an inch at the end. Then you're going to cut through here and don’t cut that last inch or so. Now the next part is a little tricky, I'm going to even this off down there. We’re going to take this, put my finger through it. All the way to the end. You can probably already guess.