I was invited to a house-warming party recently for a young couple. The invitation said, “no gifts.”. Not knowing what style the house was and not having a lot of time, I decided that a bottle of wine never goes to waste! In addition, I had some T Shirts to the school the young bride attended. So I thought a wine tote would be a good way to repurpose T Shirts. I keep my wine totes (yes, I have more than one but rarely use both….) with my reusable grocery bags. They can also be used to tote a bottle of wine to a party – although it can be awkward if you want to keep your tote!

Supplies:

• One or two T shirts – depending on the motif size.
• 1/4 yard of lining fabric – I combined sweatshirt fleece and duck cloth
• webbing for handle (or you can use T shirt scraps)

1. Cut shirts – Cut shirts to create two rectangles, approximately 7″ x 16″. You have some wiggle room depending on your motif. As you can see, mine is closer to 6 3/4″.

2. Cut lining – I typically use home dec weight fabrics for my wine totes. I was concerned that the T Shirt material would be weak, so I thought I would add a layer of duck cloth or drop cloth for extra strength. You can either underline each T Shirt rectangle with some cotton or simply create another lining layer as I did here. In addition, I have a lot of scrap polar fleece and sweatshirt fleece in my studio. I felt this fabric would provide a nice cushion for the wine bottle. In hindsight, I don’t think the drop cloth is necessary, so you can certainly try this tote without it.

Since I had enough to have a fold in the fabric, I cut both the drop cloth and the sweatshirt fleece to 6 3/4″ x 15 1/2″ with the fabric folded.

3. Sew Shirts together – Place the two T Shirt rectangles right sides together and sew around three sides using a 1/4″ seam allowance. I used a serger. You can use a straight stitch on your regular machine. These won’t be stretching.

4. Sew Linings Together – In the photo above, I placed the fleece on top of the duck cloth. I then folded it up so that the right sides of the fleece were together.

Sew on each side to create the bag, using a 1/4″ seam allowance.

5. Sew Boxed Bottom in the Shirts and the Lining – To create a boxed bottom, you have to take the bottom corner of your bag and press it flat along the seam to form a triangle.

Mark a stitching line that will be 2 1/2″ across and sew across this line. Cut off excess triangle.

Repeat for the T Shirt portion of the bag.

The bottom of the bag should look like this.

Turn the lining inside out.

6. Cut Webbing – Cut a piece of 1″ webbing to 13″ length. You could also cut strips of T Shirts and braid them to make a handle.

Pin (or clip!) the webbing to the right side of the lining centered on each side seam.

7. Sew T Shirts and Lining Together.

Slide the lining bag into the T Shirt bag. At this point, right sides should be facing together.Pin the two bags together all the way around the top.

Sew around the top leaving a 3″ opening. (I never leave a big enough opening! You don’t want the T Shirt to tear.)

Turn the bag inside out.

Pin the opening closed.

Stitch around the top of the bag to close the opening and finish the bag.

I hope you enjoy this tutorial! You can find all my tutorials on my Tutorial Page.