Plastic Bags are a big issue in our society we constantly use them, but then have nothing do to with them after we bring them. If any of you are like they sit in a container waiting to be used again, or they end up in the landfill. Now these bags take thousands of years to decompose, animals can suffocate and/or choke on them thus making these bags very bad for the environment. While the ultimate goal is for people to stop using plastic bags in turn for canvas or reusable ones and have laws against the plastic disposable ones, this project is a good way to re-purpose some into a useful object, and less ends up a landfill or lying around the house.

This instructable is part of a series I am making to raise awareness on how to use and dispose of plastic bags for my Girl Scout Gold Award.

Please vote for me. :)

Step 1: Gather Materials and Initial Drawings

Materials:

Plastic Bags (I used grocery bags they work really well)
Thin Cardboard ex. cereal box
Sharpie or other permanent marker
Pen
Protractor
Compass
Tweezers
Scissors
Tape

For the initial drawings we draw a circle in the cardboard with the compass how ever big you want the base of your basket to be, I made mine fairly small as I wanted it to pencil cup. Then from the center of the circle you just drew make another circle larger (This is the height of the basket). If you poked a hole in the center you can use tape to patch it.

Step 2: Cutting Part 1

Fairly simple, cut out along the edges of the larger circle.

Step 3: More Drawing and Cutting

Take your protractor and from the center of the circle make a line every 20 degrees with the pen. Extend the marks to the center and edges of the circle like in the first picture.

Now this is the tricky part:

Surrounding the pen lines you want to make 2 lines with the Sharpie. The length of the secant line (the distance between two pen lines at the edge of the small base circle); that length needs to constant all the to the edge of the cardboard. on the first picture you will see in the bottom outlined in sharpie of what I'm doing. So eventually you should have what look like long skinny rectangles and thin wedges. Cut out the wedges, leaving the rectangles because those are your spines for the basket. It should look like the second picture when you are done.

Step 4: Weaving

Our weaving material is plarn, however we will use the plarn loop by loop instead of using a skein of it. I will later link this to my plarn instructable.

Take one loop and place it around and spoke. Then twist the loop so the side that was on the inside of the basket is now on the outside and the outside is the on the inside. This creates an "X" between 2 spokes the open loop that does have a spoke in it goes around the next spoke. Keep twisting and threading spokes into the loop (which gradually gets smaller) until you can physically get the loop over the next spoke.

When that point is reached it is time to add another loop. Thread the new loop under the end of the old one and take the long end of the new loop and thread it through. For those who know knots its a Lark's Head knot. Then keep weaving as you were before all the way to the top of the spokes.

Step 5: More Weaving

So as you keep weaving feel free to change colors from other bags like brown or grey to add more visual contrast to the basket.

Step 6: Weaving the Top

Your basket should be woven almost all the way to the top maybe a 1/4" left of visible cardboard. Take a fresh loop, and loop it around a pair of tweezers so they can act as a needle. Pick a spot to start but do not start where the end of your last woven loop is. Make a lark's head know on that loop. Go over the to the inside of the basket, and thread the tweezers under 2 loops. This goes from the lower loop then under and out of the loop closest to the top. Then repeat the same on the outside of the basket.

Keep repeating this all the around the the top of the basket, and add loops as needed.

When you're all the way around thread the leftover thread thread down halfway from the top to the lowest on you tweezers will come out of. Remove tweezers.