This year, I want to try to make something or upcycle at least one item every month, just as a way to keep me being creative throughout the year. In addition, I have so many craft supplies, that it will be a good excuse to use them and reduce my stash.
The first project of 2026 was to renovate a shopping trolley I bought for £5 from the Tip Shop, when we were last in Yorkshire. I'd been thinking about buying one for a while, with the intention of adding my own twist to it, as a new Lidl store is opening this year within walking distance of our house and I wanted to do some of our shopping there and thought a trolley might be useful.
I don't know exactly when the store will open, as it is being built on the site of a petrol station, so there will be lots of decontamination work to do before it can actually be built, but it will be built at some point this year and when I want to shop locally, it will be my store of choice.
Anyway, as a consequence, when I saw shopping trolleys for sale in the Tip Shop for £5, I decided to buy one. The one I bought was a bit boring and a bit grubby. I machine washed the bag a couple of times, to get it as clean as I could, but I still felt like it needed a bit of jazzing up. Here's a picture of the original trolley:
I had lots of denim fabric left over from making LB's pouffe, so I decided to use it for this project, as I thought it would be pretty hardwearing and I enjoy working with it.
I began by making a hexi patchwork piece to cover the front and sides (excluding the zipped pocket). I hand stitched the large hexies together, having made them out of different coloured pieces of denim. Once I'd finished covering the front and sides, I was able to stitch them to the original trolley bag.
I then stitched some other pieces of denim together on my machine to cover the pocket on the front of the bag and also added a jeans pocket to this, just to use it up really and to create an additional pocket for my bus pass or shopping list.
Once the front was finished, I could turn my attention to the top flap and the back of the bag. I found strips of different denims and machine stitched them together before hand stitching them to the loops that go around the frame of the trolley. I then covered the back of the trolley bag with a jazzy star print denim piece that I made into an extra deep pocket on the back and added another jeans pocket for added interest.
I also needed to cover the flap at the top of the bag and I used the same stretchy star print denim fabric I had in my stash for this job, as it was a little more funky.
I decided not to line the bag, as it was currently wipe clean and I wanted to keep it that way, in case of any spillages/breakages. I did cover the board in the bottom with more star print denim, but otherwise left it as it was.
I was pretty happy with the finished trolley bag, as it looks a lot more individual and it was quite a fun project to do. Here's a picture of the finished bag:
I'm now looking forward to using it and may just have to do a shop locally to give it a trial run.
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