Weave Your Own Reusable Bread Bags

Recently, while poking around the website of our sister magazine, Spin Off, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks: a photo of a lovely handwoven linen bread bag, designed and woven by none other than Tom Knisely for the Winter 2026 issue. The project on its own didn’t surprise me, but rather the realization that as a company, we now had four different bread-bag projects for three different looms (8-shaft, 4-shaft, and rigid-heddle), all similar in size, shape, and construction, but with fun variations.

As soon as I realized we had a new bread bag to add to our mix, I thought it would be fun to collect all of these projects in one place as a gift for our All Access subscribers. (Not an All Access subscriber yet? Read more about the different subscription levels and benefits here).

Behind the Designs

I started baking sourdough sometime in 2012. While there were pauses at times when life got busy, my starter, Bready Mercury, remains a very important member of the family. So it should come as no surprise that I love each and every one of these projects!

The 8-Shaft Baker’s Bread Bag

Laura Demuth’s Baker’s Bread Bag, woven in 8-shaft twill and tubular doubleweave and finished with a coordinating tablet-woven band. Photo by Joe Coca

The first of these bread-bag projects is Laura Demuth’s gorgeous 8-shaft Baker’s Bread Bag, which you can find in Handwoven’s March/April 2015 issue. From the very first time I saw it, I loved all the thoughtful details Laura put into the design. She wove the bag in tubular doubleweave, not only because it meant minimal sewing but also because the denser fabric would help keep bread fresher. While she could have easily just twisted a braid for the drawstring, Laura designed a tablet-woven band in coordinating colors.

4-Shaft Bread Bag

Fast-forward from 2015 to 2020 when everything locked down and it seemed like everyone had a sourdough starter bubbling in their kitchen. As a gift to our readers, we offered Laura’s project in full, completely free. About a month later, and after many queries, we offered up two 4-shaft variations on Laura’s design. For the 4-shaft options, weavers could choose to weave the bag in plain-weave tubular doubleweave or weave the bag in 4-shaft twill and do a bit more sewing.

Rigid-Heddle Bread Bag

For her project, Angela Tong wove two bags on one warp. For the first, she used a natural weft; for the second, she chose to use a blue weft instead.

After seeing how much people enjoyed Laura’s bread bag, I knew we needed a rigid-heddle option. So I reached out to Angela Tong (a baker herself) about weaving one for our Holiday 2020 issue. Angela outdid herself and wove a set of two beautiful plain weave bags. Instead of weaving the bags in linen like Laura, Angela chose a slub cotton, which along with being rigid-heddle friendly, also gave the bags more texture and visual interest.

4-Shaft Handspun Bread Bag

Tom Knisely wove his linen bread bag using commercial linen yarn in the warp and precious, handspun linen in the weft.

And this brings us back to Tom’s project, the Farmer’s Doubleweave Bread Bag. While Laura and Angela were both inspired by their love of baking,