Lunch Time

Through the month of April, the wonderful folks at Sew Mama Sew were holding a tutorial contest, and crafty folk from all over the world entered their wonderful tutorials and ideas - posting them for all of us to share and enjoy. I had hoped to enter my watercolor seahorse tutorial, but alas that is still a work in progress and missed the deadline.

One of the winners in this little contest was the Square(ish) Bottom Hobo Lunchbag. I had been wanting to make some fabric lunch bags for each member of the family for a while now, but was undecided on the design. This little tote was a great combination of the furoshiki style that I have been utilizing, and a more structured bag.

This train version is for The Munchkin - not only does it hold his lunch AND breakfast for the day - it matches his Miranda day tote (as well as the pillowcase, two totes and a Wonder Wallet given away that I managed to get all out of this 2 yards of fabric). I was a little bit shy on the fabric needed for one strap, so the fabric is pieced half way up, but it does not seem to make a difference. You could get really "patchwork" creative with this - as the bag is fully lined it really makes no difference if either the covers or linings have some extra seams.

The other thing I did was to change the technique for boxing the bottom. The original instructions call for doing the corner "triangle" thing, which always seems to go wonky on me. Instead I cut a 3x3 square notch out of each bottom corner (and threw those in my quilt block scrap bag!) - and then just sewed that closed after I stitched the sides and bottom.

I made a 2nd one - but did not get pictures of it last night. On that one I took some scraps and added a square pocket inside - good for milk money, little notes, or condiment packages - and also made the bottom portion of the bag 1" taller overall to accommodate the tall round containers I transport my soups in.