Ready for School Lunch

Tomorrow is the first day of school for my kids. Yeah, we start late around here. And mostly we don't mind, until we are still in school around June 10th. That part stinks.

Anyway, this year I decided to make my kids new school lunchbags instead of buying new ones. The bags were based on the Lunch Tote (pg. 86-89) in "Sewing Green" by Betz White. The kids got to pick out their own fabric and then sort of design how they wanted them to end up looking.

L to R: Z's camo bag (4th grade), B's treats bag (2nd grade), L's blue paisley bag (HS frosh), M's monkey bag (6th grade)....3 of the 4 kids wanted their bags to be wider than tall and so we turned the design that direction. They can't wait to try them out.

We embellished them with an outside zipper pocket, mostly for them to carry their lunch money in. We've had issues in the past with it becoming lost en route to the cafeteria. We lined the pockets with something fun and/or surprising.

Here's a look at the inside. I was not able to find PUL fabric at any of my local fabric stores. So instead I bought plastic (from the home decor section) and used that as the lining. We'll see how it works. The kids are very excited about it. I hope it works the way I planned for it to.

For the "bias tape" I cut 2 3/4" strips and attached it how I would the binding on my quilts. Also for the bags that have 2 handles, instead of 1 strap, I sandwiched those like the tabs: in between the Velcro and inside lining. And instead of using ribbons for straps we made our own or used some nylon straps that I already had.

Note: If you want you can also try making your own Reusable sandwich wraps (also found in "Sewing Green", pg. 90-92). I'm going to do this with some scraps and see if I like them or not.