Below is the entrance to our house here on Paros. We’ve given it the name La Sussurrata – in Agatha Christie books, houses always seem to have a name so I decided our house needed a name, too. “Sussurrare” means, in Italian, “whisper” or “murmur” thus La Sussurrata indicates the house that’s murmured about. And it’s murmured about because of how much recycling is a part of the decor. You can see more fotos of La Sussurrata HERE and HERE.

crocheted plastic bag rug made using plarn

The idea of turning plastic bags into “plarn” to use for crochet has been around for sometime now. Most all of the bag is used save for the handles and the bottom seam. But there’s a way to recycle those, as well. This tutorial focuses on using the plastic bag handles to make curtains that are so easy to make that even children can make them!

Seam handles

First of all, you have to cut up your bags as indicated above–the same way you do when making plarn. So after cutting up your bags, it’s best to first make the plarn putting aside the seams and handles.

Plarn balls

Once finished making plarn, take the handles and start tying them together leaving the seams aside for a future project.

Handles tied together

Keep tying the handles together until you get a strand the desired length. Here on Paros, I used these curtains for the doors leading to the balcony and to the terrace as a means of keeping the doors opened but the flies out. So, obviously, my strands are the length of the door way.  And the number of strands needed depends upon how “dense” you want your curtain to be.

Plastic tie curtain

Balcony

Terrace

For the balcony, I tied one extreme of the strands to plastic rings (from the openings of water bottles) as well as to  milk bottle necks. Then I strung the strands on a piece of plastic rope. For the terrace, I used plarn to crochet a piece of “rope” the length of the doorway then tied the strands onto them.

Doorway curtain

Bathroom window

Plastic packaging

And here on the island, there’s the problem of plastic water bottles and their  packaging.  This  plastic packaging can be cut into strips that are then tied together to make curtains, too.

Make sure that the plastic bags you use for plarn and curtain making are not biodegradable otherwise they will eventually crumble away. Luckily, Italians have become more aware of environmental problems and, since 2011 in Italy, non-biodegradable plastic bags have been outlawed meaning objects made from them could become collector’s items! Plastic bags are not always labelled as to what kind of plastic they’re made from but often you can tell by touching them—the biodegradable have a kind of oily feeling to them.

Coming soon: how to recycled the plastic bag seams.