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 42 or A Bushel of Apples

This week's crop

I think I'm going to go through with the craft fair. I have yet to shell out the $20 table fee, but I made another 6 apple bags this week and put some work into making little drawstring bags out of the remnants.

If you can't make it out to Salem for the fair on December 1st, stop by Shoplocket and get a bag any time.

 

Weeks 40 & 41 or Pick an Apple

In an effort to get back on schedule, I made 4 bags. It feels like cheating to make the same bag over and over again. But hey, I've made it all the way to October and I've fallen back a bit on the schedule. Just one week. Which can be made up by going back and counting the number of bags I've made instead of the number of posts I've written. I need to cut myself some slack here. To be honest, I didn't think I'd make it this far.

Another way to look at it is that I've figured something out. A friend asked if I wanted to sell at her church's craft fair in early December. I'm considering it, and trying to apply the lessons I learned selling at craft fairs before I had kids.

1. Nobody likes a sourpuss. If you're going to sell something, you have to talk to people.
2. Variety may be the spice of life, but too much spice will sink a craft table. Pick one thing and do it well.
3. People are cheap, especially at craft fairs. Price accordingly. Or make some impulse purchase items.

If I am to do this craft fair, I will need to swallow my not-so-inner introvert and be nice to people for a whole morning. I need to make a LOT of one or two related things. And I need to make a LOT of some little throw-away thing that kids and cheapskates can pick up, feel like they're doing a good thing and buy.

So I made 4 of the Apple Bags. Not iBags. Bags that fold up into an apple shape. This time around, they're all red, but at some point I will make green apples. They're actually the perfect bag all around.

1. I can make lots of them relatively easily, although this time they took longer than I expected to sew up. And that was only partly due to the fact that my sewing table also has my computer on it.
2. I have a TON of lightweight material that isn't really suited to most other bag patterns.
3. It's a cute concept which will store and display nicely.
4. With the scraps, I can make little coin purses, gift bags, whatever, to sell as impulse items.
5. They satisfy MY need to sell something useful and unique. Yes, I got the fruit concept somewhere else, but I believe I have made it mine.

Buy it here.

I'll let you know in a week or two whether the fair is going to happen or not. And what I'm making out of the scraps. Until then, save your pennies and save the 1st of December for a winter fair. And hold your horses, because I feel like I've bought myself 2 weeks off from writing with this crop of bags.

Buy it here.

Buy it here.

Buy it here.

Week 39 or A Chalkboard Lego Box

Well, first off I'd like to thank Cynthia for the chalkboard fabric. I've got yards and yards of it. Enough to make bags to hold all my Lego's and those of the Junior FIRST® Lego® League teams at school, plus one to send back to Cynthia as "payment." (Not that she's asking to be paid, I just want to get rid of fabric!)

All closed up, the box looks pretty good.

Next I'd like to state that chalkboard fabric is a horrendous combination of stiff, floppy, thick, and weak. It's perfect for covering a corkboard and having a dual-use surface, except that it would show all the pin holes. It's good for little insert panels on larger projects. It's probably even great for making simple sewn shapes. What it's frustrating for is making large projects with complex seaming and topstitching away from the very edges. Which is to say it's been quite a workout for my sailor language as well as my sewing machine.

This side doesn't look too bad, just wrinkled.
It's vinyl(?), so I can't really iron it.

The stitching went just fine when I was sewing together the simple edge seams on the side panels. Things went swimmingly when I added the velcro and the handles, probably largely because I did that before assembling the whole thing. It even went well when I sewed the center panel in between the side panels. Topstitching at the corners was another matter entirely. I kept getting loops on the back of the fabric, and they got big enough to gum up the machine. At one point, the cover to my drop-in bobbin even popped off from the mangling. Somehow it landed under the far corner of my desk.

Don't look too closely at the stitching outlining the corners.
That's where things broke down. Also do not notice how crooked
the label on the left edge is. I sewed it blind, from the other side. 

I already cut out a second bag and started sewing it up. I have a feeling it will sit half finished for a few more weeks before my wrists recover. Oh well. I cut up a plastic sign to stiffen the sides. By the time I finish the other one, the election should be over and I'll be able to get my hands on infinite amounts of corrugated plastic.

Week 38 or Another Lego Box

The kids started back at school a few weeks ago. Lego League starts up again this week. For the past two years, I've coached a series of Junior FIRST Lego League teams at the school. This year my older one has aged out of the Junior League and is moving up to the competitive stage. We lost our competitive Destination Imagination teams due to kids graduating and a coach's kids moving out of the school. (Boo on many different levels, but she's still a dear friend, and none of the boo's are directed at her.) So the competitive pressure is on our shoulders. And my daughter only wants to do it so she can go to a championship far away. Our school may be small and poor, but somehow we manage to send a team to the DI national championships on a regular basis. In the 4 years we've been there, three years have seen a team go to Nationals. If only for the financial health of the donor community, I hope we don't go farther than local competition.

So this year I will be coaching two teams, with my kids, instead of four teams, only one of which has my kids on it. A couple of months ago I made a Lego box that we use at home. It seems to be holding up pretty well. When I made that one, I cut out material for a second one. I made the center panel out of clear plastic with Kevlar threads. At some point I forgot which pieces went to what and used one of the plain bits for some other project. How odd that the material was perfectly rectangular and 21" wide! Just what I needed at the time! So one side is cut from stiffer sail fabric, the other from softer sail fabric. I'm sure the kids will be so distraught by the discrepancy that they refuse to play.

Knowing all the pains I took to add the velcro and the handles last time, I sewed them to the components before assembling the box. Way easier. With the extremely stiff center panel, I would have been cursing like a sailor sewing them on this time. Never mind that I then sewed one of the handles into another seam. It came out easily enough with no visible damage.

I had just enough of the Kevlar material to make the lid, so I did. All in one day. OK, maybe two or three days. I had just enough plastic sign material to stiffen two sides, so I did. I may have to wait until after the elections to grab another sign and stiffen the other panels. Then again, if everything works well without it, I may not bother. Right now, it's holding together well enough, but it's definitely not as structured, stackable or tidy as the other box. I also like the idea of having a semi-clear box. Unless I can find two clear plastic panels, I would lose that feature.

Oh, crap. I just checked out the Lego League registration information, and it looks like I'll be asking the PTO for a lot more money than I had intended. Oh well, we're saving a lot by not having the DI teams. And the city wants to encourage STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs, and has a pot of money for that.

Week 37 or The Ugliest Fabric Ever

I got this fabric when I lived in Malden, more than a decade ago. It wasn't pretty then and time has not treated it well. We used to live around the corner from two upholstery shops. At some point I asked for their scraps and got a bunch of stuff, this among it.

I made a few Christmas stockings out of it and then it just sat. There's really not much you can do with rubber-backed sage green fabric with a diamond pattern woven in. It's absolutely not appropriate for clothing. Not even costumes. Stuffed animals would be unhuggable. Perhaps placemats, with a nice dark green edging; they would stay put on the table, but who has the decor to match them? I shudder to imagine a room filled with a couch covered in this.

Well, a grocery bag seems as good a use as any. The handles were a scrap from... something. It's actually quite lovely fabric, nice and soft and smooth, perhaps a very sturdy silk. I think I inherited it from my grandmother. She died 16 years ago.

Now you see why I need to make bags every week. My apartment is very slowly emerging from under decades of hoarding. I gave away a fold-up bag to the grocery store bagger yesterday. He's a very friendly guy, with mild special needs that cause him to tell me the story of Bell & Evans chicken whenever I buy their nuggets. Or how he should get his sister in New York City a bag that folds up as small as my Chico bag. Well, I wasn't about to give him something I would have to pay to replace. Plus it was filled with groceries. So I found the other bag in the trunk of the car and ran back to give it to him.

And I have, in a way, replaced a bag derived from the wardrobe of the distinguished grays with a bag worthy of a blue hair. I was a few days late already, so I wasted no time with such niceties as a proper box bottom. (I just tucked the bottom in when I sewed the side seams.) Or a separate step to attach the handles. I did stitch along the lines of the diamond pattern to reinforce the handles, though. It was enough pressure on my obsessive tendencies to see the box bottom diagonals clashing with the diamond diagonals. I could not bear to sew x-boxes to reinforce the handles.

I promise to do something more inspired on Thursday and post again this weekend. OK, maybe not more inspired but at least with nicer fabric.

Week 36 or An Apple for the Teacher

Last week I made a bag that stuffed into a strawberry shape. But a lack of polka dotted fabric, the fact that the bag didn't quite fit into the strawberry and that the strawberry was way bigger than a real-life strawberry led me to rethink the pattern. What's still red and yummy? What's a little bigger that a strawberry? What's a nice thing to give a teacher on her birthday? An apple.


So I modified the pattern to turn the strawberry into an apple. I enlarged the corner block. I added some leaves. I put in little box corners to flatten the bottom of the apple and add a little depth to the bag.

This was a rush job, since I was trying to make it to a trapeze class and still finish the bag so it would only be one day late for my daughter's favorite teacher's birthday. Next time, a stitch on the bottom to keep the drawstring from pulling out of the casing the first time you try to tie it shut.

Week 35 or The Strawberry-Banana Bag

My inspiration was this tutorial, which is itself based on the reverse engineering of a bag she was given.  My fabric must have been slightly thicker than hers because it's a really tight squeeze getting it into the strawberry corner.

I'd add some sparkly polka dots next time, since I don't have red spotted material but I do have fabric paint. And make the berry just a smidge bigger. I like the size of this bag. Much smaller and you can only fit one box of cereal in it. And sew my tag in before I put the sewing machine away.

Buy this one (with or without sparkly silver seeds) or order a custom bag at ShopLocket.

Week 34 or Chalkboards and sails

It's a transitional time of year, so I've made a transitional bag. One side nods to summer, with big red numbers on the field of a white sail. The other nods to school, with chalkboard fabric wiped clean and ready to start anew.

The last time I made a bag out of this sail and used the numbers, I was flying in a trapeze show that night. Tonight the theme is Angry Birds, so I was thinking of something that would fit with that. The black fabric was a start. The fact that we use a lot of chalk on our hands only adds to the connection. Plus there are little kids in the show family, so they can draw on the bag while they wait for a turn or a parent to return.

Not much of a tutorial to write, as it's a fairly simple bag. I cut 2 squares of fabric, 21" each. Sewed them together on 3 sides. I reinforced the seams with another round of stitching, since it's pretty sturdy material and I'd hate for the bag to fall apart at the seams. I made a box bottom and that was it for the main sewing.

I cut another rectangle, about 6" x 12" for a chalk pocket. I folded that nearly in half and sewed the edges shut. With the extra flap, I attached the pocket to the center of the top edge of one side. And that was it for all the sewing. I realize now it would have been more secure to have the opening of the pocket facing the fabric of the bag rather than the open middle. As it is, it's really easy to get stuff out, but it's also easy for things to fall out. It's all in what you need the pocket for.

I folded the top edge in about 2.75", to neaten up and reinforce things. The sail cloth is so tightly woven that it doesn't really unravel. The chalkboard cloth is rubbery with a thin woven mesh (like cheesecloth, a construction similar to oilcloth) on the back, so it doesn't unravel either. So there was no need to make a hem or sew the whole thing down. I attached grommets for a rope handle and then added 21" of rope, knotted at the ends, for handles.

I'm not such a fan of shoulder-carried grocery type bags. I don't know exactly why. Probably something to do with habit and the fact that until a few years ago, grocery bags only came in paper and had short handles. So I made short handles. In hindsight, it's probably best not to carry a bag covered in chalk too close to your body. Which is also why I didn't make both sides out of chalkboard fabric. I had a vision of myself walking along in stylish black pants and getting completely covered in chalk dust.

Week 33 or Patchwork Lightweight

My neighbor left some quilting weight fabric on the back steps. I'm not 100% sure which neighbor, but I'm thankful nonetheless. It was long, narrow strips of two types of material plus random small rectangles of another.

My first step was to sew the rectangles into a strip. Just so they would work more easily with their compatriots. Then  I searched my stash for more long narrow bits, because I had what looked like a small bag and half, or a bag without straps, worth of strips. I found the border of a plushie panel from Spoonflower. You've all heard of Angry Birds, but this was Angry Vegetables. Not really something I want to use as a panel, so it became the facing for the upper edge. And, yes, my children like their roots of some evil.

I was rooting around for a bag to imitate for size and found my old hieroglyphics bag from Cairo. It's about 17" square, with no box bottom or anything fancy. Mine had the straps replaced many moons ago and I can't use it for knitting any more on account of the holes in the corners. There's no WAY I paid $26 for that thing, but I did pay with a year of my life. If anyone asks, AFS, at least in Egypt in the 1980's, is like the Peace Corps, the toughest school year you'll ever love. I know I learned a lot more there than I ever would have staying behind to put in a 4th year of high school.

The female half of the snap.

With two strips of green and one each of red and blue, I cut 36" strips and sewed them together to make the bag body. The excess became the handles. I folded it in half length wise and then folded the raw edges into the center. Then I ironed it all nice and flat and topstitched along each edge. I did a rolled hem on the lower edge of the facing strip and all the pieces were finished.

First I folded the body in two and sewed up the edges. Then I pinned the handles and facing in place. Then I took out the pins because I had put the right side of the facing on the wrong side of the bag and the handles were not sandwiched between the two. Then I pinned the facing to the top edge of the bag, with the right sides facing each other and the handles sandwiched in between the layers. At last I sewed the ends of the facing together and along the top edge. Then I sewed 1/4" farther in from the top edge to make it all a bit more secure. I turned the facing to the inside and ironed everything good and flat. One last round of topstitching around the top and I felt like the handles would actually support a load of groceries and the facing would not flip over to the outside.

Folded once and showing the male half of the snap
 on the flap.

The last decision was how big to make the box bottom corners. I used to have a bag that would fold up and snap to itself, so I was working on that concept. (It was similar to this one, but smaller, without the logo, and with only one flap.) I divided the height of the bag(17") by 4.5 and used that number (3.77") for the corner size. I made one corner to the inside, like a normal bag. The other corner I made partly to the inside and then the rest to the outside. That became the flap for the snap that holds it all together. I sewed the snaps in place, first putting the "outie" (male) one on the end of the flap. Then I folded it up and marked where the "innie" (female) side should go. I put a scrap of fabric on the inside to reinforce the connection spot and sewed the last snap half on.

The strip.

Happy shopping!

The strip folded twice and about to
perform snap-mating.

Ready to roll!

Week 32 or T-shirt Crochet

Last week, I mentioned that the family was off on vacation, so no bag. Well, we got back today and the bag is done! Nothing like sitting by the pool watching the kids go down the same 4 water slides for 3 hours a day to get stuff made. As long as it's portable.

This bag was my inspiration. Not that mine turned out anything like it. I was going for another grocery-size bag, and I succeeded.

First I cut up one t-shirt into 1 1/14 inch strips using these directions. I grabbed my size P (11.5 mm) hook and started with a 20-stitch chain and then doubled back and did single crochet until I ran out of t-shirt yarn. I had to do 2 stitches in 1 a few times to keep the bottom straight, but I don't remember the exact numbers. Just make it flat. If it curls up into a bowl shape when you're around the corner, you need another stitch or two. If you made a ruffle, you need to take out a stitch or two.

Then I went rummaging through my dad's house and found 7 more shirts, only one of which was colored. I turned 3 of them into yarn. Eventually I got back home and used my rotary cutter, cutting mat and clear plastic gutting guide to make the strips. My hands were happy for the relief from the heavy scissor work.

I did a lap-join (overlapping the ends by about 6" instead of tying them together) and did a row of single crochet with no stitch increases. Then I switched to double crochet for the rest of that shirt and all but the colored and one white shirt. Each (men's size large) shirt only made 1.5 rows, at about 1" per row.

I wanted the colored strip to be a fairly even height and not have a super-obvious beginning and end, so I took it down to single crochet and got 3 rows almost exactly. As luck would have it, I began and ended at the end of the bag, so it's even less obvious. Completely invisible when photographed from the correct side!

I continued with the single crochet but switched to the last white shirt. I did one complete round and then formed the handles. Two inches before the center of one side, I broke away and made a 10-stitch chain. Then I skipped 6 stitches and rejoined the round. I continued on until I got to the same place on the opposite side and did the same thing. After that join, I continued with single crochet until I got to the first handle. Single crochet made it too thick, so I switched to chain stitch on top of the handle. At this point, I was worried, and rightly so, about running out of yarn before I got to the second handle. So I kept up with the chain stitch until I ran out of yarn. I worked the end in and the bag was done.

I'm proud to say that this bag is made of 100% post-consumer recycled material. No "exclusive of decoration" disclaimers necessary. And all the arms and stuff I didn't use here will get used as rags until they fall apart completely. All I have to do is sew in my tag. Click here to buy it now.

Week 31 or Vacation

I'm supposed to be on vacation right now, but I'll check in to say I'm working on a bag. It's based on this tutorial for a drawstring bag. I took one of my husband's old shirts with me, thinking it would be enough to keep me going for a little while, if not to finish the bag entirely. As it turns out, one shirt will only make the bottom of a bag for me. Luckily my dad is married to a pack rat, so I was able to get more shirts from him, along with one of my own that had been languishing in his basement since my college days. No need to get specific, but it dates from the last century and then some. But it's tie-dyed, and the rest of the shirts are white, so there will be a stripe of color in the mix. Since my goal is to use up fabric, I will not be running out to the thrift store for more shirts, so the bag will be as big as the shirts allow.

One note on finding things. I spent about 20 minutes ransacking my fabric and yarn boxes looking for my giant crochet hook. I bought it just for a project like this, to work with t-shirt yarn. Then I moved my "office" space within the house and put my roll of knitting needles and crochet hooks somewhere very sensible and obvious. To my 6-months-ago-self. My today-self did not think the spot so obvious any more. Now that I have the hook, though, I will be on the lookout for more shirts from which to make a crocheted rug for the living room.

Another fabric score comes from a teacher friend who just moved and must have found things in the process. I now am the proud owner of chalkboard fabric. Which until now I did not know existed. I think I shall have to use it for the 3rd Lego box/bag/mat. How fun is that? It's nice and sturdy and the kids can sketch their ideas on the lid!