Make-up Purse From a Petfood Bag

The packaging that's used to make flexible petfood bags is hard to recycle. Although the brand that my cat favours, Purina, has partnered with a specialist recycling company in the UK, I don't live near any of the drop-off locations for empty bags. So I thought I'd see what I could make from this material to give it a second life.

A 3kg food sack is big enough to make a cosmetics purse that's about 8½” wide, 5” tall and 1½” deep at the base. It will only take one side of the bag, you'll have enought to make something else too, such as a wallet - there are several good wallet 'Ibles, such as this one.

Try to find a petfood bag with some nice images on it. And the best fabric to use as the lining is one with a water-resistant coating to limit staining, because you'll only be able to wipe the finished article clean rather than throwing it in the washing machine.

An empty 3kg petfood bag

A piece of lining fabric 9½” x 12”

A 7"-8" zip with spiral-wound nylon teeth

Scissors or a rotary cutter and mat

A sewing machine and thread

Quilting clips (or paperclips if you don't have any)

Cut the top off the bag as close as possible to the welded seam, then fill it with hot soapy water and wash the inside to get rid of the fishy/meaty residue and the smell. Leave it somewhere to dry.

The bag should now be much more pleasant to handle. Pull apart any glued-together parts (like at the base) and then cut off the side seams and the base, again close to the welds.You should end up with two side gussets - which you don't need for this project - and a back and front each about 9½” wide. The plastic material will try to roll up, but don't worry about it, it can't curl once it's been sewn into a new bag and regains some structure.

Decide whether to use the front or the back and where is best to cut the material to give you an attractive image on the front of your purse. The image will need to be in the top half of the rectangle you're about to cut, and not too close to the edges. How tall that rectangle should be will be influenced by how much of the printed design you want on the front of the bag and how high you want the bag to be. The cat image I wanted on the front was about 5" high, so I needed a rectangle twice that tall (to allow for the back), plus a bit (to allow for the base and the seams - ½” seam allowances are suitable). I cut a 9½” wide x 12" tall rectangle, with the cat image at the top of it.

Bear in mind that any writing or images will be upside down on the back of the bag. I think that adds to the charm by not hiding the fact that this is a repurposed petfood bag.

Whatever size you make your rectangle, cut the lining the same size.

Cut two strips of plastic material for the zip tabs, each the same width as the zip and 3” long. (This assumes the zip length is 2” less than the width of the rectangle you cut. Each zip tab will fill half the 2" gap, but it will be folded in two and have a ½” seam/turning allowance at its ends. Cut different length tabs if necessary, or just fold under a bit more or less at the ends. My zip measured 7½”.)

Turn under ½” at each end of each zip tab and crease the fold sharply by running something like the edge of a ruler along the fold - use a bone folder if you have one. Fold a tab around each end of the zip to encase them - open the zip a short way to make this easier at the top end. Hold the tabs in place with clips, you can't use pins because that will make permanent holes.

Now it's time to sew. Practise first on a scrap piece of the plastic material to find out the best needle and tension to use. I had success with a fine (no. 80/12) sharp-pointed needle and my usual upper thread and bobbin tensions, but I used a bigger needle for the zip tabs to be sure it would cope with stitching across the zip teeth. Use a relatively long stitch (at least 3mm or 8 per inch) or the plastic may rip along the stitching line.

Stitch across the first zip tab, close to the fold. As long as the zip has nylon spiral teeth you should be able to sew across them, but take it slowly. With the second tab clipped in place, lay the zip complete with its tabs on the rectangle of plastic that will form the bag's outer to check that it is now the same width as the outer (and lining). Adjust the turnings on the second tab if necessary before stitching across it as before.

Clip one side of the zip (with tabs) onto the top front edge of the rectangle of outer material, right sides together, zip closed and with its pull to left (so that the zip opens to the right of the finished bag). Clip the top edge of the lining onto the same side of the zip tape, face down so that lining and outer are right sides together, enclosing the zip tape. Stitch using a zip foot.

Do the same with the second side of the zip, stitching it to the top back of the outer and lining. To do that, you’ll need to fold both the outer and the lining (separately) right sides together to bring their free top edges up to the zip.

You should now have two inside-out tubes, one of the outer material and one of lining fabric, joined by the zip. Leave them like this, don’t turn right sides out yet. Open the zip by slipping your hand in the outer material tube to find the zip pull.

Finger-press the seam allowances away from the zip and towards the outer in the region close to the side edges at each end of the zip. Also, pinch the zip tabs neatly to fold them in half, pointing towards the lining. Then clip the entire side seams together (or pin the lining half) taking care to ensure the zip seam allowances lie on the outer fabric and the folded-in-half zip tab is trapped within the lining.

Stitch each side seam all the way down from the bottom corner of the lining to the bottom corner of the outer. It’s a good idea to double check that the zip is open before you sew the second seam, because you can’t turn the bag right sides out if it’s not.

Iron the lining seams open and finger-press the outer seams to one side. At the same time, make a little crease along the fold line at each of the four bottom corners (2 outer, 2 lining).

Squeeze a corner to make the side seam line up with the crease in the bottom edge. (When you come to do the outer, you can push the lining through the zip so you can get your hands into the corners to arrange them, but remove the lining again before stitching.) The corner should make a triangle as in the photo. Measure from the corner to find the place where the base of the triangle is 1½” wide and stitch across there. Repeat with the other 3 corners. Trim away the excess material at the corners to reduce bulk.

Now clip the side seam stitching in the middle of one side of the lining and unpick it from there in both directions until you have a gap about 3” long. Secure the thread ends at each end of this gap. Push the outer through the zip into the lining, then through the gap in the side seam to turn it right sides out. Then push the lining into place inside the outer and gently poke out the corners and the ends of the zip from the inside with a finger or perhaps the rubber/eraser end of a pencil. Don’t be tempted to use anything sharper than a large knitting needle.

When the outer looks as well-turned as possible, pull the lining out again and turn in the edges of the gap along the creased lines created when you pressed the seam open earlier. Sew the gap closed either by slipstitching by hand or topstitching on the sewing machine close to the folded edges.

Push the lining back into place and then go along both sides of the zip with your fingers to make a crisp fold in the outer along the seam line. If you want to define the base of the bag more clearly and help it to stand upright on its own even when empty, squeeze your way along the line joining the bottom corners on both the back and the front to make a crisp fold.

Turning the bag the right way out through a gap in the lining will crease the plastic material. I found that immersing it in boiling water for a while made the creases and wrinkles a lot less obvious - see the Before and After photos attached to this step.

Find a container that will withstand boiling water and is deep enough to stand the make-up bag upright in it. Open the zip and pull the lining out of the bag so you have something to hold and can keep the lining out of the water. Boil a kettle and fill the container then immerse the bag in it. The water will find its way in through the stitching holes and weigh it down so that it submerges, but you can give it a helping hand by gripping the zip and pushing down - be careful not to scald yourself. The zip area doesn't need the heat treatment, it's unlikely to be very creased there.

After maybe three or four minutes, pull the bag out and let it drain until most of the water is out, then hang it up on a washing line by the lining until it's thoroughly dry. Bad creases, such as the one across the middle of my purse where the top of the bag of catfood was folded over, won't come out, but the lesser crumpling should be reduced. Press the lining with an iron before putting it back inside.