My Fused Plastic Bag Corset: A Save My Oceans Contest Top Five Pick!

A few weeks ago I made a corset for the Save My Oceans Upcycle Contest hosted by Craftzine.com. I wasn’t expecting to win, but I thought I’d give it a shot. Low and behold, my corset was announced as one of the top five entries. Unfortunately I didn’t win the grand prize, but I’m honored that my corset was chosen as a top five project. View the blog entry about it here.

My Entry for the contest:

Project Description

My project is an upcycled corset made from fused plastic bags. The boning in the corset is made out of plastic zip ties. These are used to give the corset shape. Each panel of the corset is made from approximately eight layers of fused plastic. Once fused together you have a durable, waterproof material to work with. I sewed each panel to one another using a 5/8” seam allowance, and added the metallic duct tape binding to keep the zip tie boning in place. The top curly details are made from rings I cut out of a plastic pop bottle. For the center panel I cut strips of fused plastic bags and wove them into each other, as you can see in the close-up picture in the gallery below.

Inspiration

In my house, plastic bags tend to accumulate in our closet. We have switched over to using mostly reusable bags, but sometimes we forget to bring then and then are left with these bags. Plastic bags can become an unnecessary hazard to the environment. Besides, they’re an eyesore too. I thought a creative way to help alleviate this problem was by making wearable art out of them. I had seen a YouTube tutorial from Etsy How-To’s on how to fuse plastic bags, and ever since then I’ve always wanted to try it. It’s fashionable and it’s environmentally friendly! These two things don’t always go hand in hand, but this project shows how easy it can be.

The starting materials

I ironed the layers of plastic together by sandwiching them between two pieces of parchment paper.

And remember…