This week learn how to fuse those unwanted plastic bags into your very own Laptop Case. Do your part and help the Earth Heros fight off the evil Plastic Bag Monster.

Video Transcription

[Music Playing] Rob Czar: Golly gee, there's a lot of bags on this beach. Corinne Leigh: Yeah, this is really un-cool. Rob Czar: I'm getting an incoming transmission. Male Speaker: What are you Earth Heroes doing with my plastic bags? Corinne Leigh: We're getting rid of them once and for all. Male Speaker: Then how do you plan on doing that? Rob Czar: We're going to fuse them altogether plastic bag monster and make a laptop case out of them. Corinne Leigh: Yeah. Speaker: You'll never get away with this Earth Heroes. I'm going to get you too with the last thing I do. Rob Czar: Alright. So the materials that you're going to need for this project are some wax paper, some scissors, an iron and most importantly plastic bags from underneath your sink. These crinkly bags, the kind that you get from grocery stores, these are the perfect candidates for this project. Also if you have any cool logos on them like I love New York, get little happy faces and stuff like that, it definitely makes cool art for your bag. Alright, once you have your bag that you like, you're going to prepare it simply by cutting off first the handles, and make sure you save these handles because you're going to use them at the end. Now that the handles are cut off, we're going to cut off the bottom, just right at the edges. Now you are going to make sure if you have any logos on your bag that you turn it inside-out or else this ink is just going to get all over the place. Next you're going to fold your bag till you have eight layers of plastic, so you fold it once, twice and you have eight layers. You could either do it in a square or a rectangle. We're ready to fuse our bag. The first thing you want to do is open up your windows for ventilation and turn out your iron. Alright, next grab your wax paper and get two length the size of your plastic bag. Now take your plastic bag and sandwich it in between your two pieces of wax paper. We keep our iron on at about the medium setting, making sure to keep the iron moving at all times. It takes about 20 to 30 seconds for each side. You just want to remove your wax plastic. Now you want to check if you have any bubbles in your plastic because this will lead to holes and eventually tearing, and there you go. You just fused plastic. Now another cool thing you can do is cut out shapes or other pieces of plastic and fuse them onto one another like this. Alright. Don't worry be happy! Alright, so we fused together about 10 plastic bags so far which is going to be the perfect amount for our laptop case. Next step is to sew them all together which Corinne is going to show us how to do, when we return. Corinne Leigh: Hey! Welcome back. Alright, so we're here in the Threadbanger workshop with all our fused plastic, and I'm going to show you how to make a padded laptop case. First through up all your pieces by trimming the sides, then position all the pieces together to make a rectangle, big enough to fit your computer on it twice, with a bit extra for our closure flap. Make sure you have about two and a half inches of the seam allowance on both side. Now sew all your pieces together by overlapping them on top of each other and sewing with the zigzag stitch. Once you reach your desired size, pick up the fabric you want to use for the lining in the case an old sweatshirt and cut a piece that's the same size as the fused plastic rectangle. Place the pieces together, right side facing in. Don't use straight pins on the fused plastic. The holes from the pins will weaken the plastic; instead you can use bobby pins, to hold the pieces together without leaving punctures. Now sew the liner and the shell together, but leave one end open. Turn it right side out and sew a seam about an inch in from the edge. Next, sew a seam two inches up from the bottom. Then take out some more plastic bag, all the bags scrapped from earlier, the wax paper you use and begin stuffing the case. When you get about 4 inches up sew a seam. Stuff some more sew a seam. Do this till you get about six inches from the top. Now fold and sew the top edge down. Place the case right sides together leaving room for the flap. Sew down both sides and turn it right side out. Fold in and sew the sides of the flap. Add some Velcro and you have a new laptop case. There's a ton of things you can do with fused plastics. I also made this handy dandy shopping bag. Visit the Threadbanger blog for complete written instructions. Rob Czar: Speaking of other things you can make out a plastic bag, check out this hand woven plastic bag ball gown we found over in the Threadbanger forums submitted by member bucky4prez. Also in the forums Talieps created this little one using plastic bags. Theresapandainmypants constructed well, what other than a fused plastic panda. And a technique we thought was pretty cool comes from Miss Heather Bunny where she fuses feathers and other cool things into her plastic material. Need more inspirations or just want to add a little of your own, hit up to Threadbanger forums. Hey! That's it for this week. It's now time to burst out all those classic bags and get it work. Corinne Leigh: Make sure to upload your most clever creations to threadbanger.com, and we'll see you next week. Rob Czar: Hey! So if you like this video, we got a couple more for you right over here. Click one.