Festival Wallet

Lasercutting and upcycling used shopping bags.

Combining graphics, playing around with combinations.

2 used polyethyleen (woven synthetic material) shopping bags, scissors, heatpress or iron, scissors, big needle with stump edge, masons rope.

We cut up minimum 2 shoppingsbags with the same (polypropylene) material,but different prints.

Flatten the material in the heatpress, it needs 120° celcius, very shortly, few seconds, check, press again shortly if needed. To hot will meld the the material and make it even more

On the diagram, you see the idea of how to make the pattern.The grey object is the phone.

We added 2 cm on the width, and 1 cm on the length of the phone. As a standard thickness for the phone we take 1 cm ( protective cover included). Included pattern is made for a regular mobile phone of 65 X 130 X10 mm

( protective cover included) The PDF AI file is attached.

Mix and match the parts for the wallets.This is the most funny part of the tutorial . Play around with graphics and colors composing the 3 parts of your wallet .You can cut out more from the bag, or recut bigger parts into smaller ones, if this favors the composition.Use the backside if you want white.

We used 1mm fluo yellow cheap masons rope, because we like the funky color. Fold the parts in 2, hold them together with a peg, hairpin, paperclip ….

You need a very big needle with a stump edge.

Start sewing on the top edge, contuinue sewing trough the holes in one direction, al the way down, and sew back up, so you obtain a closed stitch on both sides.
Pass the yarn into the start point, and fix the yarn by burning the ends.

This is just 1 possibility, you can try other shapes or applications, like totes for specs, washing tote bags.. Why not cutting up other waste materials? Make sure the selected material is stiff enough, in order to do the sewing with the thick yarn. If you want to use worn garments, such as sweaters or cotton trousers, you need to add textile transfer foil before the lasercutting, on the backside, to block and fixate the tiny holes and give some extra solidity to the material.