Sandwich wrapper

Sandwich wrapper with a sandwich inside - sandwich was placed on the plastic side of the fabric, the non-Velcroed sides were folded in and then the Velcroed sides were folded in so that they held the whole lot shut.

Sewing the velcro to the sandwich/snack bag

sandwich/snack bag - nearly finished

I thought I'd start my new blog with a project that was both procrastination and practical. Now, I'm not much of a sewer but I happen to have one of my late mother-in-law's sewing machines and my mother lent me her overlocker. This was my first over locker project and I've learnt a few things from it.

I already use a lot of plastic containers in my girls' lunch boxes but I hadn't found a sandwich container that fit in with everything else. I knew I could buy these types of wrappers and bags from a a number of WAHMS but funding was really tight, so I bought some PUL fabric from ebay. I was able to make 2 sandwhich wrappers, 2 sandwich bags and a smaller snack bag from a piece of fabric that cost me about $6, including postage.  I used about 75cm of Velcro (hook and loop tape) but I was lucky enough to have that left over from another project.

I didn't have a pattern so I just tried putting a sandwich in the middle of an A3 sheet of paper and played with it until I was happy with the size. The sandwich wrapper turned out to be a great size, it's approximately 30cm x 30cm (12inches squared). I overlocked around the edges and then sewed some Velcro (hook and loop tape) to two opposite corners. The Velcro is approximately 8cm (3 1/2 inches) long. You can see that one is sewn almost all the way to the corner and the other is a couple of centimetres away from the corner. They're sewn on opposite sides of the fabric.

The sandwich bag used a rectangle of fabric that was 38cm x 21cm. When it's sewn up and Velcroed closed, the bag is 18cm x 21cm. Overall, it's too big and should be much closer to a finished size of 16cm or 17 cm squared. I overloked the bags closed on the outside so that the sandwiches (and their contents) wouldn't come into contact with the stitching. The snack bag measurements weren't important because I made it whatever size the left over piece of fabric was.

The PUL is easy to wipe clean or shake out if there are just crumbs but it can also be machine washed if it really gets grotty. I've been reading a lot about PUL and whether or not it should be used for this sort of thing. There are two schools of thought:1) PUL is not certified to be food grade and if food is stored in there when it's hot (such as a sandwich in a lunchbox left in a car or in the sun) toxins may leach out of the PUL into the food (there's no solid evidence that this will or won't happen). 2) As long as the PUL is not left to get hot, it's safe. I decided to go with the second school of thought but there are apparently other fabrics that might be used instead, I just don't know what or where to get them from, or they were VERY expensive by comparison.

I need to go back and re-stitch the ends of my overlocking because i hadn't realised that it would come appart, the same way as most stitching will, if you don't secure the ends properly. Oh well, not bad for a first overlocker project.