Lunch Bag--Tutorial

This bag can be made of any fabric suitable for carrying your children's lunches. If you homeschool, use it for field trips, or lunch at the park. If your children attend public or private school, they could carry their lunches to school.

Materials are your choice. I learned to make this bag from an on-line tutorial using oil cloth. You could salvage an old vinyl tablecloth--the kind with the flock in the back, or denim--as this one. (I made one for my DH in gray cammo denim) My instructions are for denim or duck fabric, which stand up to much use and many washes.

You will need 2 pieces of fabric 15 x 12 inches. On two of the corners, cut away a 2 & 1/2 inch square--this will make the squared bottom of the bag.
Sew the two long sides, and the bottom that has been made by the cutting away.

Meet one of the bottom seams to its side seam, repeat on the other side.
I top stitched all the seams for reinforcement. I cut the fabric with a pinking rotary cutter to avoid fraying. The top stitching can be done easily on the sleeve arm of the sewing machine.

Turn the bag right side out and seam all 4 sides of the bag to give it stability. Turn down a hem--about 1 & 1/2 inches at the top.

You may want to iron on patches. Use a piece of parchment paper for the best results. The parchment paper can be used over and over again until it browns with the heat of the iron and becomes brittle.

After you have applied the patches, sew around them with a narrow zig-zag stitch for extra stay-on power during the many washes.

I used a commercial pressing ham, inside the bag, it makes the job very easy.

Two patches on each side, representing the sports #5a likes.

The bag is empty, so you could see how well it stands with those narrow seams.

Close up of the hem.

This one is 'toy bag' for #5c (almost 3yo who asked for a bag to carry his Thomas the Train trains)

* I employed the same pattern, with a couple of changes.

* I used a double sided pre-quilted fabric--just because I liked it--no technical reason.

* I serged all the raw edges.

* I did not sew the 'stabilizing seams' to make it stand.

* I turned the hem outward so the inside of the fabric could be decorative feature.

* Also used red seam binding tape to hide the serging. The resulting casing was convenient for the 'rat tail' rayon (slippery for easy draw) handle/draw string.

Here it is standing open.

The inside. (the little squares are the cut aways from the bags, they will be #5b's dollhouse rugs and 'bedspreads')

Here are both of the bags. They do not look like they were made with the same pattern.

I appreciate multiple and varied applications of the same pattern.

Not much else to report.

I'll leave you with this:

"A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak" Ecc 3:7

In His hands, ^__^