Plastic fusing experiments- Part 1

I saw this blog post about making plastic fused bags using this technique and was smitten. I just had to do it. I started by collecting all the white/transparent plastic bags I could find and then used some flower cut outs from magazines.

Being too lazy to do the whole measure-mark-cut-sew routine (and having no sewing machine either ), I just folded the fused plastic rectange into half and fused three edges to make a bag. I also fuse-attached handles to it.

Some pictures taken during the process.
As you can see the the plastic is a bit burnt at places. Hopefully better results next time, now that I ve learned the right temp settings.

Adding the handles

Sewing the sides of the bag together
And ta-da....

Lessons learned
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1. You can use plain old paper instead of parchment paper mentioned there but, DO NOT USE newspaper i.e unless you want a newspaper print, if you look closely at the bag you can see that the heat transferred some of the news print to my bag. Cool, if that is what you intended, but that was not exactly what I wanted. I got wiser and used plain brown wrapping paper the next time.

2. Do not put the paper cut outs in between the last two layers., at least put it in between layer 2 and 3. The plastic tears and burns around the cut outs if its too closer to the outer surface .

3. Sewing is prolly better than fuse stitching the bag.

4. Always take accurate measurements for bags ( I dint have the patience and did all estimations and random fusing , resulting in one handle smaller than the other and a curvy edged bag)

5. Adding panels and maybe following some tutorial (maybe this ?)would prolly have resulted in a roomier bag for the same amount of fused plastic.

I have a window/panel in the spare bedroom where I want the light to stream in but still want to hide it. I am thinking of a fused plastic panel with some kind of mosaic/pattern embedded in it, that should make plastic fusing experiment- part 2 :-D