Recycled T-shirt Book Bag with Dr. Seuss Style

Get ready for some quick and easy creativity with some red and white Dr. Seuss style! Today I have a super easy book bag you can make in literally minutes! You just need a white t-shirt (grab one of those old shirts the kids have outgrown) and some red felt and you’re ready to get creative.

Fun for kids too: This is a SUPER simple sewing project, so if you have a beginning sewist in the house, this is a great project to try out!

Materials you need:

• 1 white t-shirt
• 1 sheet of standard red felt
• Scissors
• Needle and thread (or a sewing machine)

How to make your own Dr. Seuss style t-shirt book bag:

You can really make this bag in 15 minutes – NO WAY! Yes… yes way I say!

1. Fold the t-shirt in half vertically and cut off the sleeves. Cut off the neck band, making sure to make a longer curved opening than the neck hole. The remaining fabric at the shoulders will become your bag straps.
2. Cut the red felt into strips.
3. Sew red felt strips on to front of tshirt, spacing out the felt to make red and white stripes.
4. Sew the bottom of the shirt. This will become the bottom of your book bag. I like to stitch this at least 3-5 times just to ensure it’s sturdy – this is a book bag, ya know!

VOILA! You are ready to pile all your Dr. Seuss bags inside and head to a comfy reading spot!

Supply replacement: You can use fabric glue, hot glue or iron on webbing to adhere the stripes to the front of the bag. However, I don’t recommend you replace the bottom sewing with anything else. Maybe a super strong iron adhesive would work… but because this bag is intended to carry books, I recommend using your strongest technique. In this case, that would be sewing. (feel free to try duct tape if you’d rather… but that’s a whole different project all together!)

Tip: I only sew one line along the felt stripes, but you can do all kinds of fun stitching or multiple stitch lines if you’d like.

Now that you’re having so much fun creating Dr. Seuss inspired crafts, check out my free Dr. Seuss bookmark and reading log printable.

This project is part of this month’s Craft Lightning Dr. Seuss series. You can find piles of more fun Dr. Seuss quick crafts by visiting: