Hopefully wherever you may live plastic bags are not something that are so easy to find, but if you are like me, and live somewhere where plastic bags are still plentiful, unfortunately, well the best thing is to craft with them! First of all, there are a few ways to make "plarn" but I'm going to show you the method I use, as it's fairly quick to make and quite honestly becomes a bit of an addiction. Heavy plastic bags are great for fusing projects like I've taught you here, but the light weight bags (mine are from the grocery store and the vegetable store) used for food, and even light weight garbage bags will do the trick as well, and are in fact the best, since you can get quite a bit of "plarn" out of one bag.
Check out all my plastic bag crafts right here, and then collect those bags and start using them to make yarn! To keep it from getting tedious, start a ball of yarn, and then simply add to it each time a plastic bag comes into your life! In the past I made balls of plastic bag yarn in solid colors, but this week I decided to make multicolor plastic bag yarn as it is perfect for the plastic bag pom poms I'll share with you shortly! Okay, lets get to it!
How To Make Plarn:
You'll need lots of light weight grocery bags, plain white, colored, and with printing on them. Bags with printing on them add some flecks of color which can be great.
Follow the steps below and you'll have some "plarn" for your first project in no time:
Step 1: Smooth out the bag and cut on the dotted red lines. These portions are garbage. The bottom of thin bags usually has a gusset (pleat) on each side which should be cut open with scissors.
Step 2: Carefully fold or roll the bag horizontally to create a 1 inch wide roll. Cut the bag as shown at intervals of about 3/4" inch (2.5cm) to one inch. You can experiment with the width depending on the craft you'll be doing but much thinner than this will result in a weaker crocheted fabric and possibly a floppy pom pom. The pieces that you've cut should be closed loops.
Step 1: Now you will make yarn by joining one loop to another like this. Place one loop on top of another.
The loop on the right should be on top of the loop on the left.
Step 2: Pull the top of the loop under and around the loop on the left, and back up through itself.
Step 3. Pull gently until you've formed a knot. Continue to add loops to this piece in the same way. If you are making multi-colored balls change the colors every few loops, or however often suits your fancy. I love the randomness of not planning!
