sandwich wraps (with update)

I have been using foil to wrap my sandwiches for work so I could also use it as a place mat on my desk. It was very wasteful. I have seen these sandwich wraps around a lot, but the ones I saw to buy were the pocket kind and I wanted a "place mat" kind. I also thought, "I could make that!" but I did not know what to use for the liner since I did not want to use something toxic. Enter Towards Sustainability, an Aussie Mommy Blogger. She used a ZIPLOCK baggie!!! Genius! Please see her tutorial. Like she says on her blog, who knows what kind of chemicals are yet to be found in Ziplocks, however, they currently are food grade!

So I set out to make my very own sandwich wraps and I even made a snack pocket to match. They were so easy to make and I kept going! All 4 of my sustainable home-made-lunch-ware are from 2 one-gallon size freezer baggies—think of all the use we’ll get out of them!

Another pattern. Basically, I made these for almost nothing. I had the square patterned fabric and the Ziplocks on hand. I bought the below fabric last week in the remnant section for 50 cents!

Matching snack pack for dry snacks, like pretzels or Cheerios, or granola.....
Sewing around the edges after turning it right side out to make it lie flat.
After all 4 Velcro pieces were sewn on. And miracles of miracles- it works!

Now for the bloopers section: I made a few mistakes on the first one, so let me share them with you in case you want to try a wrap out for yourself. I fixed them on my later attempts. 1) I did not cut the plastic and fabric out square. It was 10”x11”. I don’t know why I thought that would work. 2) I drew the piece of bread on the plastic “square,” not diagonally –I should have followed directions! I decided not to even bother drawing on the other 2 I made. 3) I left a stray piece of thread between the plastic and the fabric.

The mistake I made on the snack pack was, I did not sew on the bottom piece of Velcro before sewing it into the pocket shape. Therefore, I could not machine sew it (as the pocket was not big enough for the machine to get inside. I had to sew it by hand instead. No biggie!

None of these things factor into the usability of the end product, thank goodness!

I have washed one of the wraps in the washer and laid it outside on a towel to dry and so far so good! I washed it on the delicate cycle. The other 3 are in the wash now. I stuck them in a lingerie bag and used the regular cycle...we'll see!

The REAL test is taking a sandwich to work! I am doing that tomorrow so I'll have to let you know!

P.S. I am changing fonts. The Courier was just not working for me! Trying out the Trebuchet.

UPDATE 03.25.10: The wraps I made were a bit to large so I will need to move the Velcro in a little more from the border. Perhaps about an inch so that it will tightly seal in the sandwich. Otherwise, I am very happy with my little sandwich wraps! I used the snack pack today to take an English muffin to work and it was a perfect fit! Very happy! And I have washed all of the wraps and the snack pack in lingerie bags on the gentle cycle and laid them outside on a towel or on top of the dryer on a towel to dry. The outside method was a tad faster, but there is the risk of the wind blowing them away since I did not hang them from a line!