Like most of us, I am trying my best to reduce, reuse and recycle. I felt guilty every time I pulled yet another paper towel off the roll to wrap my toasted breakfast in to transport off to work. So this weekend, I felt enough was enough and during nap time I sewed up a bunch of these cinch top snack bags and some sandwich bags!

My husband recommended a design for the sandwich/morning toasty bag and I faithfully executed a sandwich bag that was amazingly easy and the perfect size for a fat quarter.

Instructions:

1. cut two rectangles 7 1/2″  x 18″

2. taper in the top about 1/2″ and a slight angle to the 3″ down mark so that the top of the bag slides nicely under the strap

3. Place a piece of 7 1/2″ ribbon or bias tape and position about 2″ from the bottom of the bag and pin to the right side of one of the fabrics.

4. With right sides together, stitch around the entire bag using a 1/4″ seam allowance and leaving a 3″ gap in the top to turn it right-side out.

5. Before turning, reach in and remove the pins that were holding the ribbon/bias tape in place, and trim the corners off a bit so that you have nice neat corners.

6. Turn inside out and push in the corners to make them nice and neat.

7. Fold up the bottom of the bag with your featured fabric and ribbon/bias tape on the outside by 4 1/2″ and pin into place.

8. Tuck in and pin the opening you used to turn the bag inside out closed and stitch around three sides of the bag starting at one of the bottom corners going up the longest length to the top of the bag, along the top (making sure you are successfully stitching the opening closed) and back down the other long side of the bag.

9. This stitching should be as close to the edge as you feel confident (I used 1/8″). You will be leaving the bottom of the bag unsewn.

10. Stitch two horizontal rows about 7 1/2″ from the top of the bag to indicate where the top should be folded down and tucked under the strap.  I’m not so sure these stitched rows are totally functional. It does keep the bag from getting too..*ahem*… baggy though.

And that is it!

I’ll post a tutorial next week for the cinch top bag that I used to morph these three tea towels I found at a garage sale for $1 each as I used the same directions for the snack bags photographed above.

The post was updated on 10/28/09 with a correction to step 4