Lunch Sack and Reusable Snack Bags

I haven't shared much personal information on this blog, but this week my son started at a new preschool. He has an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and started at a school that is specifically for kids on the autism spectrum. Technically, my son has PDD-NOS, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. This basically means that he has some challenges typical of autistic children, but he doesn't have all of the classical traits. He can talk and communicate, which is one of the reasons this school wanted him to attend there, but he often struggles with certain behaviors and has a few sensory problems (like getting his hair cut and brushing his teeth).



Anyway, instead of going to preschool a couple days a week for a few hours a day, the bus picks him up at 8 in the morning and drops him off at 3:30 in the afternoon. That means he eats lunch away from home. He's a pretty picky eater (aren't most kids?), so I figured it would be worth it to make lunches for him.

I try to be environmentally conscious so I knew I wanted to make a lunch sack with reusable sandwich bags. I was looking for tutorials and came across this one at A Lemon Squeezy Home. Totally adorable! My son loves anything to do with cars and trucks so he picked a bus for the design on the front. I've been wanting an excuse to buy some Wheels fabric by Riley Blake and this was the perfect project for it.

Here's my not-anywhere-near-perfect version. In my head, the bus was going to turn out so cute, but instead the front tire looks a little flat and I should have probably picked a more symmetrical object for the front flap. But, oh well. Mistakes to learn from.


I appliquéd the windows and wheels onto the front, used PUL for the lining (the same thing in the cloth diapers I have), and added my son's name on the back. It took a while to make it, a few hours I think. But, at the end of the day, my son was happy with it. He made up a little song that he sang about loving his bus lunch bag. Can't ask for a better response. And even though it's not perfect, if he likes it, that's all that matters, right? (Although you can be sure that I'll be making a couple more to try to improve my skills.)


I also made several sandwich/snack bags. I used the same two prints for these as I did in the lunch sack, but in different colorways. Two have velcro and I used this tutorial for those. The other two are just the plain old fold-over kind, but I had to figure that one out as I went along. All the bags use the PUL. If I make more, I'll modify the tutorial I followed so there are no raw edges on the insides of the bags. I can see those catching crumbs easier.


The velcro version was easier and quicker to sew than the fold-over version. Although, I bought self-sticking velcro and couldn't sew through it without mucking up my needle. Luckily, it's VERY sticky and adheres nicely to the PUL. I don't think I'll have to worry about it coming off for now.


I whipped 12 of these up in about an hour and a half on Sunday. Super fast and super easy.

Oh, and one more thing. Angela over at Cut to Pieces (the mastermind behind the INCREDIBLE Where Blue Birds Fly doll quilt) is giving away a copy of Cherri House's City Quilts book. Head on over and check it out.