second woven tote bag

Here I am, enjoying the fine craftsmanship of my second attempt at weaving plastic.

After my frustrating experience with the cardboard loom, I broke down and bought myself a Easy Weaver (paid for by generous Christmas/birthday money from relatives. Thank-you!). The thing runs $120, but is an absolute joy to weave on.

I went through all of the trouble and heartache of threading the warp with plastic thread, which is especially difficult on the Easy Weaver because the yarn attachment mechanism is Velcro. And yes, it was as much of a mess as it looks.

I tried three different materials for the weft, determined to make my plastic thread warp work. From bottom to top: plastic thread, wool yarn, and plastic yarn.

The problem was the same with all three materials. I couldn't use the rigid heddle to beat the weft into place because it would catch on bumps in the plastic thread when I tried moving it at all. Utter failure :'-(

After undoing all of my hard work (and the first ever project on my brand new expensive loom), I gritted my teeth and tried again. I threaded the warp with wool yarn this time.

(btw as a vegan I don't normally use wool, but I couldn't find any looms that didn't come prethreaded with wool yarn)

Using normal yarn for the warp and plastic thread for the weft worked like a dream. It's hard to tell that the weft is even plastic. To keep the ends from unraveling, I did a quick zig-zag stitch on both ends (above).


While I'm sure that the woven piece is strong enough to be a bag by itself, I have more confidence in canvas material. As such, I sewed canvas border on both of my woven pieces before sewing them into a bag.

here is the finished tote sitting on my sewing table.

Summary: Weaving two 13 1/2 inch by 17inch pieces took 2-3 hours. The whole project took 3-4 hours with total dimensions of 16" X 18" with 8" long handles. I used about 15 plastic bags, but I don't know how much wool yarn (a lot) I used. Cost was around $122 for me, but assuming you already own a loom cost is about $10 ($2 for the cloth, and $8 for the yarn).

Performance: This bag has been weight-tested at 5lbs on a half hour walk home. It could probably hold more, but I'm not sure my shoulder could take it :-p

Disposal: This is another difficult bag to recycle... You'd have to tear apart the weave to separate the plastic from the wool. The wool could be composted, the plastic recycled, and the fabric downcycled into rags.