My dishtowel drawer is a hot mess smorgasbord of fruits, vegetables, flowers, chickens, funny sayings, and colorfully striped images, all printed on cotton rectangles. The super-absorbent among them, often dingy and stained, are the workhorses of my kitchen. The others, those with high sentimental value or less absorbency, have been smushed up in the back of the drawer for eons. They are the ones now being repurposed into vegetable storage bags.

I use the storage bags as I harvest food from the garden.

I use them to store veggies in the fridge after they have been washed.

I use them to hold electronics when I travel.

The idea came to me while harvesting greens in my backyard. I didn’t want to mix the kale, lettuce, and spinach leaves together yet didn’t have enough containers to keep them separate, so I decided to repurpose my stash of dishtowels to make harvest containers.

I started with my favorite towel, one my mother bought me from France while on one of her annual painting trips with artist friends. Talk about high sentimental value.

This painting of my mom was created by one of her friends on that trip. It captures a moment in time when she was happy and healthy.

This towel was from a pair that fell into the category of loved but not absorbent enough. I ended up making two bags with them, one for my sister-in-law, Lesley, and the other for my friend, Jennifer, both of whom garden.

I am a scrappy seamstress, but I don’t let that stop me, and I hope you won’t let it stop you. I had to finish this one by hand because my sewing machine died.

I used the trimmed remnants from this first bag to make the drawstring.

My husband gave me the idea to use shoelaces instead. I ordered an assortment of 54″ laces from Amazon.

How to Make Dishtowel Storage Bags:

Supplies:
Clean dish towels, any size works
54″ shoelaces

Instructions

Fold dishtowel in half with right sides facing. If the towel is too wide for your intended use, trim off some of the width.

Pin side seams together. On the bag opening side, leave a two-inch gap. This is where the tunnel for the drawstring will be. Sew the side seams and trim off the edges to reduce bulk.

Sew the tunnel opening. You can do this the quick way, which leaves you with an unfinished edge,

or you can unfurl the original seams, fold the frayed edges under, pin them, and create a more finished edge.

Next, fold over the top one-inch edge of the fabric, pin it down, and sew the drawstring tunnel.

Run your shoelace through the tunnel, and you are ready for business.

One dishtowel will stay in my collection forever, and there is a story about it here. RIP to my dear and funny friend, Carol, who died two years ago from breast cancer.

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Some other Fun How-Tos:
How to Make a Heart Tree
How to Make Cork Bulletin Boards
How to Build a 4 x 4 Raised Garden Bed
How to Make Whole Milk Ricotta
How to Peel an Orange or Grapefruit Quickly

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