An Experiment, Part 2

I was reading Martha Stewart's magazine (again) and saw something that led me to this link on her website.   I thought the t-shirt bag would be kind of loose and flimsy (or wongo--thank you, Ariel, that is a great word!) without interfacing to stabilize the t-shirt.  I decided to take her basic idea and see if I could improve on it.  

The next step was to pick out a sacrificial t-shirt from my multitudes.  This is just a small fraction of the ones in my closet.  As a runner, I have so many race t-shirts that I will never miss a few.

Then I went to Joann's for supplies:  cotton fabric for lining, fusible interfacing, coordinating thread, and a button for closure.  Remember, I am just making this up as I go along.
I have a 16.5" quilter's square so I decided that would be the starting dimensions of my bag.  I cut the sleeves off the shirt and cut down the sides and across the shoulders so I ended up with a front and back to begin with.  I then cut the fusible interfacing slightly bigger, about 17x17".  I ironed the interfacing to the wrong side of the t-shirt, centering it about the design I wanted on the front of my bag.  Then I put the square on top of the stabilized t-shirt and cut around all the sides with the rotary cutter.  I did the same thing with the back of the t-shirt.
Then I laid the square on top of my lining (cotton from the quilting section) and cut two squares of lining.
I then did a similar process with t-shirt fabric from near the bottom hem and more interfacing.  I ended up with a 20x5" strip of fabric.  I cut that in half lengthwise.  I also cut strips of cotton fabric to the same dimensions.  Now I had two 20x2.5" pieces of t-shirt stabilized with interfacing and two 20x2.5" pieces of cotton fabric.  Next I had to sew these together to make straps.  (This is a big difference from Martha's bag.)  So I put a strip of t-shirt and a strip of blue cotton together, right sides facing each other, and sewed up the long sides.  Here's an example of that.
Then I flipped that little tube of fabric inside out so the pretty sides were now on the outside and pressed it nice and flat.

At this point I was hungry and realized I should eat dinner and that I should have started my experiment earlier in the day.  So I cooked a pork chop, made a salad, and poured a glass of wine.  I decided it would not be good to sew after drinking that glass of wine.  So I set aside my project for laundry duty.

I will get back to my experiment this week!