Mylar figeting

A friend of mine has one of those small, woven bags make of recycled candy wrappers. I am so envious every time I see hers, that was until this week. Yesterday I investigated this eco-friendly trend on the web and came up with some surprising facts not to mention wasting a lot of time. Why is the question.


My friend's purse is like the photo at the right, made of printed candy wrappers, or potato-chip bags or any snack bag made of Mylar, lightweight and easy to fold. Fancy eh?

Keep reading.

First of all those Coke and m&ms bags are not made from 're' cycled anything, the package manufacturer prints a longer run than needed and what to do with the over-runs? Why there just happens to be a craft-jobber waiting to take UN-cycled goods off the inventory. Purely coincidental, right?

Second, this method of folding, wrapping and interlacing candy and gum wrappers has been around since....well since forever. The absolute origin is unknown but prisoners for a century or more have been making 'objects' out of scraps of wrappers (mostly cigarette packages), and if the place of origin was known for these bags, what would you bet that prisoners are making most of these (or political detainees in Columbia, or widows and orphans in China, or slaves in Somalia(?)).

Yes, there is a dearth of information on the web, try the first link to a source making belts out of potato chip bags (way too yellow for me) Coca-Cola labels (red & white, what else?), chip-wrapper-purse. 

For a small purse the estimate is that you will need 28 bags - except in my house where potato chips are outlawed. Who is supposed to eat all these snacks?

Or try the next link for a how-to that is way below average. How to make a purse youtube.com
Or pay the big $$ online at http://www.ecoist.com/ for a small change purse or even more for a tote bag. I am not nearly so envious as I once was. Yes, I could make one for myself but so could any high-school-drop-out-felon with a lot of time on his/her hands.

Then I thought, why not try it in fabric?  Great idea, NOT!
Begin with 2-inch by 4.5-inch strips, then fold wrappers into halves, quarters, fold again in the middle and fold each side in half - for a total of 16 layers: my machine will not sew through 16 layers of anything. Besides, why not just make a fabric purse with a flat zipper  - been doing that for years and I am not reliant on candy wrappers OR incarcerated crafts. Just my own originality.

Why didn't I think of that? bb