Gingercake Love Your Lunch Box & GIVEAWAY

This lovely specimen is the Love Your Lunch Box pattern by Gingercake. Virginia gave me this pattern to help celebrate her Lunch Bag Sale month. She has 3 lovely lunch bag designs that are all $5 for the month of July. I chose this one because I’m feeling a bit guilty about the last 47 things I’ve made for L when J gets bupkis. This design would be great for a boy or a girl, and since I have both, I try to choose patterns that will do double duty.

PATTERN: The Love Your Lunch Box is an uber expansion on a simple lined bag. It has a handle, 2 exterior pockets (I only used 1), and a flap. The instructions are visual, and clear. The pattern pieces only required 3 pieces of tape to assemble (a serious departure from the Archer I just cut out). I was a little worried about sewing all the layers of lining/interfacing/fabric around those rounded corners, but it worked like a dream. The only semi tricky part is sewing the lining into the bag because there are a lot of layers. 

FABRIC: The body of the bag is my standard Joann denim that I keep going on about. I was having trouble finding a light denim in a particular shade, so I thought I’d try bleaching it myself. That way I can have any shade of blue I want (I want them all!). After a whole lot of experimentation yardage (you’ll be seeing a lot of bleached denim here in the future) it didn’t work as hoped. It always comes out looking tie dyed, which won’t work for the project I had in mind, but works great for a lot of other things. This test denim was the jumping off point for the lunch box. The green is a plain-jane piece of quilting cotton, of abominable quality, also from Joann. I originally purchased what in my mind was the perfect tiny accent fabric from a lovely local sewing shop. I washed it, dried it, and lost it! I bought the smallest piece possible, and that is my penance for being cheap. So there I am at Joann for the second time in one day, trying to find something just as perfect, or at least not so horrible, the store is closing, and I have a vague notion that all of these prints suck and I should just get a solid, and sew something onto it. After cutting out those pattern pieces I sewed lines of contrasting stitching 3/8" apart. These patches of quilting are the result, and I am just thrilled with them.

OTHER MATERIALS: This is not the kind of thing I would normally sew, and well…I should have read the directions before I went to Joann the first time, or I wouldn’t have ended up there the second time. Geesh! To maintain the structure of the bag each layer has interfacing, and the middle is a quilting type thing, you might put in a soft cooler, called Insul-Bright. I couldn’t find Insul-Bright the first time around, so I bought an interfacing that looks like quilting, but has a fusible side, and is about the thickness as Insul-Bright. This quilting substitute worked out just fine. Its amazing how a few floppy  layers sewn together makes one very substantial layer. I also grabbed self adhesive Velcro by mistake. DO NOT DO THIS. I’m pretty sure they use this stuff to stick fighter jets to air craft carriers. It totally gummed up my machine, and ruined a needle. Grrr, won’t make that mistake again.

ALTERATIONS: As mentioned earlier, I only used one exterior side pocket. I also cut a corner off of the flap to make my little decorative quilted patch. That’s it.

SNACK POUCH: This pattern includes a bonus snack pouch pattern, which my family uses a ton of. I added the thick interfacing to the exterior fabric so I could do my quilting move. I also added pull taps to the top, and I extended the Velcro the full width of the bag. I will be making at least 10 more of these.

Even in second grade my son takes lunch and a snack to school each day, so this bag might be a bit of a squeeze. No problem. As part of Lunch Bag Sale Month Virginia has a bunch of tutorials on her blog showing tons of ways to customize her patterns. One shows how to make a bigger Love Your Lunch Box, and add a zipper pocket. That is the beauty of a pattern like this - it has a ton of customization potential. J loves his lunch bag, and L has already requested one of her own. I’m thinking more bleached denim…

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All Gingercake lunch bag patterns are only $5 each for the month of July. 

GET YOURS HERE!

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Gingercake has generously offered one of her lunch bag patterns to a SweetKM reader. Her designs are great for adults and kids. Check out the selection then use the form below to enter. Giveaway closes next Thursday (7/24) at midnight.

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