My work lunch is almost always a brown-bag affair. Usually, assembling it involves sleepwalking through the prep – washing fruit, tossing baby carrots in plastic containers and making the obligatory boring sandwich. Then I scrabble around under the sink and drag out a plastic bag and cram said lunch into it. It's usually not till I'm on the bus that I notice that I have a flaming yellow discount-store bag or – worse – a bag from the pet store. When we ran out of bags the other day, I decided it was time to whip up a homemade lunch bag. I'm a decent basic quilter, but I haven't done a lot of other sewing. I am out of my element with clothes, and I've had a few flaming disasters in the Christmas stocking department. So I needed a pattern that really worked, with lots of visual support. I've mentioned my love of The Purl Bee before, and I'll say it again: they have some of the best sewing, knitting and crocheting tutorials around. And they didn't disappoint when I went looking for a simple lunch bag that wasn't emblazoned with the Global Pet Foods logo. While I liked their Back to School Lunchbag, I didn't have any nice decor-weight fabric, and I certainly wasn't up for embroidery on a Wednesday night. Then I saw the words Easy Drawstring Bag in their project lineup and I knew I'd found my pattern. The tutorial was perfect (as always). Simple instructions, helpful photos exactly where I needed a little advice and a lovely finished product I could be proud of. I used a hamburger-patterned fat quarter I'd been hoarding for some time, but there wasn't quite enough. So I added a chunk of pretty red paisley in the centre to get the proper size rectangle to start with. [caption id="attachment_5644" align="aligncenter" width="393" caption="Packed up and ready for use in the staff lunch room"] [/caption] This bag was so simple and so quick (under an hour, even with many breaks to triple-check the instructions and repeatedly measure seam allowances), I'm going to make some more. Maybe just a little taller, and with better ribbon. I'm just glad that gives me another excuse to head to the fabric store. Happy sewing (and lunching)!