Waterproof bags?

[lady delapreParticipant]

Has anyone made waterproof bags? What material did you use?

Also anyone made one’s with zips at the top or pockets?

[offcutsParticipant]

Hi lady Delapre. I seem to remember someone making morsbags out of shower curtains. As far as pockets and zips, basically there is nothing to stop you but the main ethos is for us to have a simple design that anyone can make. We often have people who have never sewn before. Also a morsbag is there foremost to replace the free plastic carrier bags which don’t normally come with zips and pockets! Some people make shoulder straps, join pieces together etc. As long as they have a morsbag label, are sturdy enough to carry bottles, free, counted on your pod tally and preferably used with recycled fabric it’s all good! 🙂

[KrisabyParticipant]

Hi lady delapre. I made a few morsbags from shower curtains that I had been given. They were very popular. I only made straight forward bags of the usual design as my aim is to make as many bags as possible and simple is quickest! I do fancy ones every now and again for my own entertainment.

[lady delapreParticipant]

Thanks for your replies. There was a guy on Facebook talking about packing up backpacks with toiletries and warm clothing to distribute to the homeless, and I thought it would be good to be able to make Morsbags for this purpose instead of having to buy backpacks. Not sure if it would work or not?
https://www.facebook.com/TheLuciaProject

[beattieKeymaster]

We’ve made fairly waterproof bags out of material intended for making hot air balloons. Ivybags bought a big lot of offcuts from Cameron Balloons in Bristol and kindly passed some on to us. The fabric is very fine but strong and just about waterproof. Some of those bags had integrated pockets or sachets to fold them away into, like Onyabags.

I’ve tried shower curtains and they were OK, but difficult to sew, especially the final bit of the french seams as the fabric is slipper and “creeps” as you sew.

I’ve sometimes made bags out of duvet covers where I’ve kept the poppers at the top of the bag but you have to be careful when cutting out the fabric so that the poppers don’t occur in the side seams or where you want to bring the handles up, so they’re a bit tricky.

I’m not very good at inserting zips, but I see no reason why you wouldn’t be able to. I try to get the stitching close to the edge of the bag when sewing the handles up into position and you’d need to allow room for the zip and not get too close to the edge.

We’ve made quite a lot of bags with pockets – they’re a good way of brightening up dull bags with a scrap of nice material. I like to put the morsbags label on the pocket before I sew it onto the bag, but don’t always do that.

Giving them out to homeless people with useful things in is a great “good cause”! 😀

[beattieKeymaster]

I’ve just had a look at the Lucia Project – brought a tear to my eye.

I think that if you decide to go with morsbags instead of backpacks I’d possibly scale up the size of the morsbag a tad – maybe make it wider and a bit longer, and if you do that, reduce the length of the handles a little bit so it doesn’t drag on the ground if you’re not very tall. Or make the bags with a gusset – a strip of fabric between the two bag sides so that it’s deeper to get more stuff in.

[masterclockParticipant]

I have made a lot of fairly waterproof bags from blackout fabric which is coated with a rubber-like compound on the inside. The seams are not taped though and there is no opening seal involved though.

Waterproof zips are tricky. I would tend towards a flap and button approach, or perhaps a sort of draw-string system just pulling the top shut.

[offcutsParticipant]

We give a lot of morsbags to a lot of food banks. If we have any made out of blackout fabric then we do give them those but the factory that donates the blackout fabric to morsbags is short at the moment but you could contact Lynne at Kio Bags to see if she has any left.

We have set up a good system with the food banks. They make up food parcels using normal sized morsbags, the service users take them and when/if they return they bring back the empty bag and get another full one. So far this is proving to be sustainable. Obviously they don’t get them all back but thats fine as hopefully they are being used.

This Christmas we are supplying 200 morsbags to one of the Bridge groups which supplies festive food parcels. Next year they are attempting to make their own morsbags with the help of volunteers.

Looking at your link I would suggest contacting them to see if they could us a standard morsbag to fold up and put inside the backpack as a re-usable extra.

Let us know how you get on 🙂

[Author]

Posts