Being crafty and green

Last weekend I referred to a project I had started. My friend's wedding shower was today. She and I are in the same year in the PhD program I am in, but do VERY different research. I sit in a windowless basement lab all day; she heads to Africa to do her research. She and her fiance/husband have already been married in Africa where she was in the Peace Corps (this is a different friend from that one mentioned in yesterday's post), are having their American wedding next month, and will then have something in Germany (where her fiance/husband is from). They joke about how every vacation they go on now, they will have to have some sort of wedding ceremony. Anyway, she is very environmentally conscious and is try to be as green as possible for her wedding. For example, she planted a bunch of tulips for the wedding, paperwhites as back-ups, and if Mother Nature decides not to help her out with these flowers, than it just was not meant to be. (Her sister has said that she will run to the grocery store and buy flowers if all else fails.)

So her wedding shower was along those lines. It was a surprise shower and the couple is not registering anywhere. The planner asked that everyone carpool, bring a "green tip", and if you had received your invitation, to bring a couple of parts of it that were going to be reused. I made a bunch of reusable produce bags out of tulle to send along. I have company this weekend, so was not able to go to the shower. Hopefully they liked the gift! This is my work station. I do not uncover my sewing machine all that often, but am glad I did for this project. I made them one bag out of each of the colors I bought and gave her the website for the instructions. There are a few finished ones on the left.
Oh, yes. The ordeal surrounding these bags was that they require twine. Regular old kitchen cotton twine. You would think you could get this at a grocery store. I looked around, customer service tried to help. Nothing. I went to three more stores before I found it. I probably used up so much gas trying to find the twine to negate any benefit of having the bags in the first place.

The story/instructions to make these bags is here. I bookmarked this site at one point after finding it on another blog. I forget on whose blog I saw the instructions to make these bags, so please identify yourself! I now have enough tulle left for a bunch more bags. I plan to make them and give them to others I know will use them and put in that extra effort to not use a plastic bag. I did not get a chance to take a picture of the full set, so maybe I'll take a picture when I get through the rest of the fabric.