Organize Your Groceries with an Innovative Hanging Bag Holder

When I was a kid, my grandma loved crafting things for her craft fare. Every year she tried to learn and provide a new craft at her fares, Whatever was left over, she’d also use as Christmas gifts too.

Recently, I’ve been wanting to work on my sewing skills. I feel like its an important skill for me to learn, and when I do it, I do enjoy it. So I found a tutorial online for one of the crafts my grandma made, the bag holder.

Materials:

• Tea Towel
• 25″ Ribbon
• 11″ Elastic
• Sewing Machine Thread

Tools:

• Sewing Machine with Needle
• Scissors
• Pins/Fabric Clips
• Lighter
• Safety Pin

Instructions:

Lay your tea towel out so that the nice side is facing down, away from you.

Fold over the short ends of the tea towel to make a ‘channel’ for the ribbon and elastic to be threaded through.  Sew along the folded over end to secure.

Stitch the ends down before moving on to the next step.

Once you have stitched down the sides, your gonna want to fold your tea towel right sides together ‘hotdog’ style. Go ahead and pin it down and sew a seam down the long side.

Turn your material right side out now, so that you can thread your ribbon (or I used lace due to the lack of ribbon). A safety pin attached to your Ribbon/Lace/Elastic makes this very easy.

The ribbon/ lace at the top is so that you can hang it easily somewhere. When my grandmother made them, she would just put elastic on either end. I’m not sure which one I like better personally.

Your gonna put elastic at the bottom and make sure you sew the elastic ends together. I would have gotten better photos but as I was attempting to sew the elastic my sewing machine needle broke. And then I got side tracked so photos were forgotten. But this is what the bottom looks when its all finished. I just threaded the elastic just as I did the lace, with a safety pin, and then sewed it together. Due to the pre-existing hems on the tea towel, I just hand stitched the small gap we had where we threaded it closed.

All in all this was a very easy project for someone like me, who doesn’t sew all that often. This is a great idea for Christmas gifts, with tea towels usually being reasonably priced at Dollar General or the Dollar Tree. And its something homemade, which personally, I think means more than something you just go buy at the store.