As you may have noticed before, I love to repurpose lots of different things, but old t-shirts are probably my favorite material to work with. The edges are hemmed in a way that forms a handy tube which is perfect for easily making drawstring closures. In literally less than a minute, once your sewing machine is out, you can have the sewing part finished for converting both sleeves of a t-shirt into 2 drawstring pouches.

If you use the right size sleeve for the project you’re making, and the sleeve is straight enough, there is only one small seam at the bottom to sew. I usually end up sewing 2 seams, though: one to straighten up the side seam, and the other to close up the bottom. (Sometimes I dew 3 seams, one on each side, and another on the bottom.) How to make a drawstring bag in less than 10 minutes! Upcycling t-shirts into bags, and sleeves into smaller pouches, is something so easy to do, and it can be so useful in so many ways. It’s super simple, and anybody can do it. Don’t have a sewing machine? It’s only one sleeve, so you could easily hand sew them in a pinch. Seeing as I have a couple of projects on the blog already that use the idea, I figured that it was silly to have to keep writing up the same instructions over and over again. This merits a post of its own! Why upcycle a t-shirt?