Week 45 or Lined Lunch Bags

I didn't even think about it until I sat down to write this, but these bags sum up our household politics. Red and blue. Pretty evenly split with white flags at the ready. It's been a tough week, but we seem to be coming out the other side still stitched together and ready to make lunches.

It's a standard size bag, copied from little shopping bags and apple picking bags. Perfect for Mom and apple pie. Lined with rip-stop nylon. Durable, washable, wipeable, small enough to carry, large enough to hold a small picnic.

A bit late, but not too much. And once again, I've made multiples. Three this time. Each just like the others. And stiffened on the bottom with discarded lawn signs from the election.

As I approach the end of the year, and the end of my initial commitment to this project, I need to remember that the last few weeks I've been over-producing bags and have actually sewn enough to finish out the year. But I'll keep going for at least a few weeks. And probably, because that's just the way I am, into the new year.

Week 44 or More Bakery Goods

Sandwich wraps folded into 1/3 squares.

The theme of the month is the bakery. About 2 years ago, I bought some waterproof fabric and made sandwich bags for our family and a few others. I bought a yard more with the intention of making more for friends. Well, intentions gave way to procrastination and the material lingered. Until now.

Position your sandwich.

Ready to roll.

The other supply that had been languishing was a pile of quilting fabric. Whenever I feel like I've got too much material, I think of the place I bought this stuff. A quilter needed fabric, but she didn't know how much of any particular pattern she might need. So she bought the whole bolt. Then she needed something else. So she bought another bolt. Eventually, she converted her dining room into a sewing room, with a cutting table instead of a dining table. And fabric racks instead of credenzas. Then she took over the little room next to the dining room. I bought about 20 yards of fabric that day. I felt so decadent and ridiculous. The flannel got used pretty quickly to make nightgowns for my daughters. I made a couple of skirts for them. The rest just sat. Until now.

Fold in the bottom corner.

I'm pleased to say that there is now an inch or two of space on one of my fabric shelves. That could be because I now have a box of fabric waiting for a purpose. But I know I've made a dent already.

Works with a sub roll, too.

This week I made sandwich wraps. With the benefit of 2 years of field trials, I decided to move on from bags to flat wraps. They have the advantage of being able to fit any size sandwich on any type of bread. You could also use them as placemats or mini picnic blankets. And if you're really desperate and serious about your low-carb diet, you could use them in place of tortillas. Very high in fiber! They're 19" square, large enough to fit a sub, sturdy enough to sit on. Machine washable and PVC-free.

The front of the 15 year, 3 generation quilt.
You can see the backing peeking out of the top right corner.

My very own quilting scraps, from the backing of the only quilt I ever made, became two more baguette bags. Very dark purple with golden lettering and lilac gingko leaves. Hopefully potential customers will not associate the wrap with the smell of gingko fruit.

The baguette bags.
They're not that short, just folded in 4 for the picture.

Week 43 or The Bakery Bag Collection

Yes, I am going to do the craft fair on December 1st. Thank you very much for asking.

A & J King's rack o' bread.
The epi is on the bottom shelf.
It's a pull-apart baguette
without an end for everyone.

I had to make myself another baguette bag, since I am now buying two loaves of long, skinny bread at a time. One baguette for school lunches and an epi for an group snack when I have 2 extra kids between school and gymnastics. You can't expect them to make it all the way from lunch to 4:30 without some extra calories! Especially when you're also asking them to 75  minutes of gymnastics and half an hour of running around on the playground. No sports drinks, though. That's why they make water fountains, girls!

I used a different font on the upper edge of the bag. It didn't turn out nearly as well, so I'll be going back to the original font. On the machine it looks like a printing font but it turns into cursive when it's sewn, since it doesn't cut the thread between letters. To the lady at the bakery who said people would buy them: be at the fair; the bags will.

The cookie bag.

I also sewed up a bunch of small bags from the scraps of the apple bags. It's the beginning of my Bakery Bag Collection. There's the cookie bag, which will hold a large chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin or peanut butter cookie. Then there's the biscotti bag, which I realize is just cookie in another language.  It's a tiny version of the baguette bag.

The biscotti bag.

Perhaps next week will bring the sandwich bag. But probably not the cake bag, although you never know. Carrying those boxes can be a challenge. And they certainly don't fit in a regular bag. Definitely not a sticky bun bag. That would just get too gross too quickly. If you have any other suggestions, write them in the comments.

Week 28 or The Baguette Bag

I buy a lot of baguettes at our local bakery. They're delicious. They're fresh. They're the only thing my younger child will take for lunch.

Courtesy of A & J King Bakery, Salem

I've seen cloth bread bags on other blogs or webshops, but scoffed at them. I already teeter on the line between reasonable eco-consciousness and tree hugging granola freak, and that's only because I live in Massachusetts. If I were farther south, I'd be over the line already and too embarrassed to carry them. In any case, we don't have a breadbox, and most of our bread gets thrown in the freezer for storage beyond a day or two. The loaf breads, when you get them sliced, come in a plastic bag. So I freeze them in those. The baguettes, though, come in a plain white paper bag, which is useless for the freezer. I've been happily recycling the paper bags every week. Except that they're kind of a pain to fold up and stuff into the bin.

So there you have it. The real reason I will be carrying a cloth bag to the bakery next week is that I don't like folding long, skinny bags. As a side benefit, I get rid of an otherwise useless piece of fabric. And I save a tree over my lifetime. And I save some bleach from being used to whiten those bags. And I save the gas used to haul those bags to the recycling center. And to reprocess them. And to ship them back to where they will eventually be used again.

One of my pet peeves is people doing nothing about climate change because they don't believe the science. Forget the climate change part, there are plenty of other, completely unrelated reasons to reduce, reuse and recycle. Like mountain top removal coal mining. Or fracking. Or acid rain. Or resource depletion. Or the destruction of pristine habitats for the extraction of rare minerals. Or industrial accidents like Bhopal. Whatever your reasons are, start with the reduce, then go on to reuse and, as a last resort, recycle things you actually needed and used until they wore out.

This bag was made from material from a friend who was clearing out her house to prep it for sale, so she gave it to me. It's the same butterfly material that lined the teacher's bag a month ago. I'll use the bag until we stop buying baguettes on a regular basis, which might be the day I die, they are that good. Hopefully, when I am done with this bag, I will still be able to bring it to the city's fiber recycling day so it can be made into cotton paper or carpet backing or car soundproofing material or home insulation.


I started by cutting out a rectangle. Then I pinned the wrong sides together and sewed  along the long edge and one short end. Then I pressed the seams open, clipped the corner off, turned the bag inside out, and sewed the seams again. That's a French seam, which seemed appropriate for a bag for French bread. Plus it would keep me from getting stray bits of thread in the bread.

Then I sewed two button holes near the side seam and the fold, about 2 inches from the top of the bag. I turned the top edge down so the buttonholes were barely not folded inside the bag. And I sewed all the way around the bag,  just above and just below the buttonholes. Spelling out "Baguette Bag" using the over-the-top feature of my sewing machine that allows me to sew letters. Lastly I threaded two lengths of cord through the casing I'd just made, with one knot coming out of each buttonhole. Voilà, a Baguette Bag.