I saw this post on craftstylish about reusable snack bags and had to make some. I hate throwing ziplocs away after using them once; it's ridiculous. I also happened to have everything I needed to make them already: some fabric scraps and velcro, both left over from making a mei tai (baby carrier).

The directions call for cutting out two 6x12 pieces of fabric, folding them in half, and sewing up the sides. Once I folded them up, I realized that the person who wrote the directions was using fabric with no particular direction. My fabric had tigers, and if I did it that way, they'd be upside down on one side. Oh well, my bags would be slightly shorter, but that's ok. I made two squares, made sure the tigers were right side up on both sides, and sewed around three sides. Then I cut 1/2" off of my lining fabric to allow for the bottom seam allowance.

I decided to use PUL to line my bags. PUL is polyurethane laminated fabric, which is a polyester knit on one side, and 1 mil polyurethane on the other. This is what cloth diaper covers are made of; it's light, waterproof, and comes in lots of colors. I'd bought some a while back to make a diaper pail liner, and thought it might be nice to have a waterproof snack bag. I wouldn't put a cup of water in the bag, but it'd be great for something like slices of fuite. I pinned it carefully together, started sewing, and realized I'd forgotten what a pain it is to sew PUL. It's stretchy. The laminated side is slippery. It feeds unevenly; when I got to the end of the top piece there was still half an inch of bottom piece. It gets all gather-y. When you mess up, it's hard to get the stitches out.

I made it through one bag and decided that cotton liner in the example wasn't such a bad idea after all... I'd already three sets of fabric, so I found some plain cotton, cut out a liner piece, and shortly had a cotton-lined bag.

But then I realized hey, someone with an internet connection must have sewed PUL before. It's only because of the internet that I'd even heard of PUL, right? Yet again, I was amazed that I survived before the internet. With a few minutes of searching, I found this trick: pin paper on top of the slippery PUL! It fed through the sewing smoothly. When I finished, the paper came right off; it was perforated like a stamp. Amazing.



left: cotton-lined bag, right: PUL-lined bag