Love your world! Get ready to take on a day of shopping at the farmers market, downtown, or at the mall with a roomy and conscientious Coffee-Bag Bag!
Reduce your packaging footprint by using sturdy coffee bags to make a whole collection of reusable totes and pouches. Use flattened coffee bags and coordinating duct tape to make pencil sized zipper pouches to spacious open totes that keep up to 8 coffee bags each from adding to our waste collections.
Peel open the waxy seams of coffee bags to get their full size, and wipe them down. It’s interesting to note that they can go in the dishwasher. For the largest bag I make, the TOTE in the chart below, choose 8 and and tile them into a long rectangle.
To get the rectangle, first join 2 squares of 4, then join those together.
I sew mine with a teflon foot that eliminates skipped stitches, and then I use packing tape on the inside to seal the stitches. Always sew straight so the pieces will lay flat. Trim the allowance to neaten it up.
Close the resulting rectangle into a tube, flatten, and then choose one end to sew closed. That will be the bottom. I’m not saying to turn things inside out because it doesn’t matter. Choose your own aesthetic!
Flatten mitered corners into the bottom of your bag. I wanted the points on the inside so I did turn the bad inside out for this step. You can see that this bag will have 8″ of thickness.
For the top edge, with the bag still inside out, fold about 2″ of the top down, twice.
Then turn the bag right side out to get ready to add the straps.
This part is awkward, but it does work. Rip or cut 2 pieces of 26″ duct tape (or DUCK tape if it’s cute). This is what goes over your shoulder, but the actual strap is much longer, and will be added to the shoulder piece. The longer piece is 50″-60″ depending on your bag height.
Lay the longer piece on a clean flat surface, sticky side up (obviously). Lay the short piece, sticky side to sticky side, on the longer strip in the middle of its length.
Each of these straps goes on one side. The handle should not cross over to the other side of you bag. Match the top edge to the shoulder strap end, and stick the rest down the side and under the bottom. Do this for all 4 sticky ends, hopefully overlapping the ends on the bottom.
Use some additional duct tape to anchor the handles on the inside. It’s not elegant, but it’s helpful.
I’ve been using these for years, now, and they have held up really well. I know the info is pretty raw. If you have any questions please ask! I hope you enjoy this. Please feel free to share. I’d love to see your bags!
