Grocery Bag to Gym Bag

Several years ago, a friend gave me a whole stash of FreshDirect bags to use as material, which he'd collected in the first stage of the pandemic. In the 3 years since, I've used them for countless grocery trips and to move apartments twice, but never got inspired to make anything out of them.

Today, I finally decided to make a gym bag (partially inspired by Becky Stern's FreshDirect Picnic Pack).

Disassembling the Grocery Bag

This is my favorite part. There is something so satisfying about taking a seam ripper to something and figuring out how it was constructed.

In the case of these bags, they've got:

• One main body piece (the front, bottom, and back of the bag)

• Two square(enough) side pieces, lined with bias tape

• Two inside flaps, lined with bias tape

• Two woven straps

Of that, I ended up reusing everything except one of the flaps, and some cutoffs.

Assembling the Gym Bag

Next, I cut circles out of the two square side pieces. I just sort of eyed this instead of doing the circumscription math, and my circles ended up a little too small for the length of the body piece I needed to wrap around them.

Here is the math I should have done:

Height of bag = x (I actually never even measured it)

Length of main piece = 3x (Assuming the side piece is roughly square)

Circumference of circle = pi*d

In order for the main bag piece to wrap about the circle...

Length = 3x = Circumference = pi*d

Which means that the diameter of the circle needs to be...

d = 3x/pi = 0.955*x

Next, I attached a random zipper that was about the right length to one of the top ends of the bag. I left the original fold over, and eventually went over the second stitch line to secure it down too.

Then I converted one of the original inside flaps into a side pocket, by folding in all of the edges except one of the long sides (which I had left finished with its original bias tape) and sewing it into place. Note: I could have easily done this with the other inside flap on the other side too, but I just didn't want to.

Because these bags are plastic, I found tape to be more effective for temporarily holding pieces in place than pins.

Next I sewed the straps back on, eyeballing the location based on where I thought it would lay most naturally against a round bag.

Then I somewhat sloppily attached the other side of the zipper to the bag's remaining top edge.

Finally, the hardest part, attaching the main body of the bag to the (now circular) side pieces. I sewed with wrong sides together, which is the same way the original grocery bag was constructed, and I ended up with some bunching and pleating because my sizing was a bit off. Then, I trimmed down the edges and covered them with the original bias tape.

And we're ready to hit the gym! Now I just have about 20 of these things left...