hippy dippy snack bag

I don't know if you all have noticed, but my recent blogs typically have nothing to do with wedding planning. The beginning of wedding planning is really interesting and involves picking things out, finding "the" dress, etc. The middle of wedding planning, in my case, involved the holidays and kinda taking a wedding planning hiatus. I assure you everything will get done and the wedding will happen and be fabulous. I also assure that this post will not be wedding related, but I promise to put a picture of my cat at the end in case you get bored.

Loosely wedding related, I've been on my aforementioned fitness kick. The fitness kick is closely related to my "save the planet" kick. We quit buying bottled water and using our aluminum water bottles. We have always recycled, but now I'm obsessive with it (I take a Diet Coke to work everyday and bring the can home to recycle it because I can't bare the thought of putting a perfectly recyclable item in the trash). Fast forward to last week. I realized that three days in a row, I had used and thrown away a Ziploc bag. So I decided to use some of the extra fabric laying around to make reusable snack bags and post on here my first attempt at a tutorial.

Step one: Dig up some fabric. I decided I'd be an expert quilter a few years ago and needless to say that didn't happen so I had some leftover fabric. Since it's just plain ol' cotton, nothing that will be damp, ooze, or have any sort of sticky wetness can be put in this bag. I was planning on using it for trail mix so that wasn't really a problem, but I did decide to line my bag. This made this exponentially more difficult, but I knew that when I started.

Step two: Cut out two pieces of each fabric that are the same size and shape. In my version of crafting, nothing is an exact science because I'm impatient. My best friend from high school and I met in Home Ec, where we agreed ironing our fabric before we got to sew was bullshit because it delayed the instant gratification. I did however wash and dry this fabric since it's going to touch food. Pin the pieces right sides together on three sides. What I *should have* done was pin and sew it together on three and a half sides, but I didn't really "plan ahead." Because that's for losers.

Step 3: Turn what you just sewed together right side out. You could totally stop here and have a not-lined, two color bag. But then you'd have to put the zipper in right away and trust me, you wanna avoid that for as looooong as possible.

Step 4: Pin the "outside" right sides together so that the seams will run up the sides of the bag. I wanted the teal color to be outside, not that janky lime color, so I pinned it so the teal was inside. Sew that shit up.

Step 5: Here's where the pictures drop off because I decided it was up to you to figure out the zipper. I had a hard time and I won't show you what happened. There was cursing. I was angry. I did in fact stab myself with a straight pin trying to pin the zipper to the fabric. Also, this was the part where it would have been REALLY FREAKING HELPFUL if I had finished that edge that I mentioned earlier.

Step 6: Pour yourself a stiff drink if it's after noon and you just installed a friggin' zipper because you're saving the damn planet. Take a couple pictures of your Blackberry in said bag to prove that it can contain things. Notice that when using your Macro setting on your camera that you can see all of the fuzzies on your touchscreen phone.If it's not after noon and you're zipper looked like mine did, you don't get a stiff drink and you're gonna want to cover up where you stitched the zipper. Find some ribbon and THE BEST THING EVER, no-sew hemming tape. I have these items on hand because last year I was going to make a Christmas tree skirt. I made the skirt part and was going to decorate it with ribbon, but was so angry by the time I got done that I just quit. We had a lame looking plain blue felt tree skirt that promptly got covered in cat hair and disintegrated in the washing machine this year.

Step 7: Cover up your nastiness. If you've never used the no-sew tape, I am telling you right now, DO NOT GET IT ON YOUR IRON. IT WILL RUIN YOUR IRON. We have an old cheap-o iron and that works just fine, but I got a little bit of tape on it and was horrified. I managed to salvage it, but if you have a nice iron, be very very very careful. And don't say I didn't warn you.
This is the bag's good side. And no, I'm not going to show you its bad side. You see that brown stuff on the ironing board there at the right? That's where I wasn't careful with the hem tape and glued some pants to my iron and then assumed the iron wouldn't stain anything. At least it wasn't the pants I guess...

It's bigger than I had intended. I guess when I was "measuring" at the beginning I was imagining more of a seam allowance. Whatev. Now I can put *more* trail mix in it. It's a little crooked and wonky, but it is handmade with no pattern or real measurements (or rulers or yard sticks). Ideally I'm going to make a few more so that I don't have to put a small amount of something in a huge bag. Maybe I'll show you those too. Maybe not. Here's my cat.