Sandwich holder tutorial

Today was a big day for Bo, our preschooler. Instead of just going to school from 9-12, like she normally does, she stayed for the lunch hour. She was so excited, you would have thought she had Santa Claus for a substitute teacher. (Bad example. She hates Santa Claus.)

It's an option the school offers and one I think I'm going to take them up on often because I'm always having to cut Magpie's naps short so we can get to school to pick up her big sis. In fact, I still had to wake up little sis today, even with the extra hour.

It's a win-win, because Bo was thrilled to eat with her friends and take part in the lunchtime routine.

And, it's going to give me an excuse to start sewing cute lunch bags.

This is the part Bo isn't so thrilled about. She wants a Dora lunch box like one of her friends has. Like normal, I'm trying to avoid the commercial stuff. I know, I know. I had the Muppets, Mork & Mindy, Star Wars and everything else when I was a kid and I turned out fine (debatable). 

I did take her to the store to buy a Dora sack but I just couldn't do it. They were $14 and we own so many other things that work just as well. 

One of those things, I reminded her, is her favorite blue (plain old blue, no characters, no rock stars) backpack. She was happy enough with that, and I made an agreement with myself not to push any of my handmade lunch bags on her anytime soon.

That doesn't mean I can't make a reusable cloth sandwich holder, though! 

I bet there are other tutorials floating around for similar things, so you might want to google around a while before you start sewing since I'm not convinced I have the best design on the Web. But I think this will work well enough, so follow along if you'd like.

Update! Here are some better shots of sandwich and snack holders I made using this tutorial:

  

Instructions:

Cut two pieces of fabric into 12-inch by 12-inch squares.

Please note--I placed a fake sandwich on the fabric to make sure it was big enough. It's in a plastic baggie so I wouldn't get crumbs all over the craft room (heaven forbid I mess the place up even more than it is), but the whole point of this project is that you won't need the plastic baggies anymore.

Put the fabric together, right sides facing, and sew the pieces together along three of the sides.

Turn the fabric right side out, and poke out the corners using a dull pencil or other pointy (but not sharp) object.

Sew the fourth side shut by tucking the raw edges in toward each other and topstitching over all four layers.

Decide what sort of notion you want to use to keep your sandwich holder closed. I'd planned to use Velcro but quickly realized I didn't have any. So I cut some snaps off of the girls' old onesies ...

... and sewed them onto the four corners of the sandwich holder*, making sure everything faced the right way so opposite corners snapped together correctly.

Take a quick photo of anyone who might be helping you complete the project:

Sandwich goes inside there:

Then the top two corners meet, snap, and keep the sandwich in place until chow time.

*Next time I make one, I might place the snaps differently so the holder folds like this instead:

Just seems like it'll hold the sandwich tighter. It's not like I'm packing grinders or anything. 

There you have it. A 30-minute project that solves global warming. Almost. Not quite. 

P.S. Wash often. 

Comments

[Karla W.]

When Mandi was younger I would take her to the fabric store with me to pick out fun, non-comercial patches to decorate the plain and/or home made items, or to just freshen them up a bit. We'd also use fun ribbons, buttonsm or beads.

Doing this made them more special and she'd never have a hard time finding her item in the sea of comercially decorated stuff.

[Megan]

That's great, Karla. Sounds like a fun activity together.
Kids are going to be exposed to so much commercial stuff anyway, I don't see the harm in us trying to make life as noncommercial as possible while we can. I get teased for it by some family members, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one.

[tonie]

seems to me that if you sewed some plastic, at least on the inside, or both on the inside and outside you wouldn't have to wash as often, just wipe down.

[Amy]

How do you make the baggies like what you have the carrots in? I'm going to make a book sling for my son today (hopefully today) and I was browsing your site and really like the idea of the sandwich/snack bags. Right now, I just use one of the plastic sandwich holders for his lunch.

[MrsOgg]

I'm far from making our home totally green but, love to implement simple things like this and save $$ at the same time. Thanks for the great ideas :-)

[pharmacy]

You have a beautiful daughter. She looks pretty cute and funny.

[Megan]

You could use one of the training pants diapers (that go over the undies) as a liner... clean and washable!

[Buy cialis]

that beauty whenever a child begins his training is so rewarding besides the idea of ​​the covers for food is very beautiful