the lunch bag

I saw a pattern for a lunch bag about a year ago at pink penguin.  I've been thinking about it for all this time and finally found it again and decided to make it.  (The free pattern and tutorial are here.)

I even had some of the same fabric as she did, so it just seemed to be fate.  The outside squares with the food choices and calorie count on them is a vintage handkerchief.  A sherry has 150 calories.  Pink Penguin had some reproduction fabric that was the same, but mine is old.  I can't remember if it's from my great grandma's collection or if I picked it up at a yard sale.  I can't believe I can't remember.   Regardless, I loved it and it has been hanging on my sewing room walls for three years waiting for the right project. The green checkered fabric and red with white dots are left over from Bee's birthday aprons.  The navy with lunch food on it is leftover from when I was making bunches of the sandwich wraps.

I think last year, this lunch bag intimidated me.  It's a medium difficulty project at least.  After these other recent medium-at-least projects, the bucket hats and the tatanne bag, I felt a little more confident about making it.

It's essentially a fabric basket/bucket with interfacing and insul-bright to help keep in the cold.  Then, a drawstring topper is added.  It's smaller than I thought, but it turns out it's plenty big for lunch food.  It isn't big enough for lunch a water, but that's not a big deal.

It was one of those projects that left me feeling really happy afterwards.  That probably has something to do with the other sewing projects I've been doing lately which involve a hundred yards of denim and leaves me feeling not so happy.  That's for another day.