Bandana snack bags

You don't really care that I've been feeling the need for a cloth snack bag, but that truly is what I've been thinking about. I've been doing a bunch of traveling; I'm going to be doing more travel this spring; and I like to bring trail-mix-y stuff along with me while I travel.

I'd been packing my travel trail mix in random plastic bags, but I like this less and less -- not only for aesthetic reasons, but also because bags that seal (like zip-lock bags I inherit from other events) don't stand on their own, so the threat of spilled food is real.  

But my snack mix is dry enough that I figured it's transportable in a cloth bag. And when my husband handed me an old bandana he no longer wanted (printed long-ago with a "Happy Birthday" message from his coworkers -- ??!?), I figured this might be just what I needed: tight weave, small scrap of fabric, and if transforming a bandana into a snack bag doesn't work . . . well, the bandana was headed for the rag bag anyway.  Plus, I was just tickled by the whole 1970's motif of a bandana thing melding into crunchy granola thing.  Could this project be any more hippie without getting to the point of tie-dye?

So here's the bandana-to-granola bag transformation.

Step 1:  Fold the bandana in half and then mark a line down halfway.  I sewed a seam on either side of that line and then cut things in half again.

Step 2:  Four seams sewed, and already I have two bags!  I could have stopped here, but to make the bags nicer, I'll go a little further.

Step 3:  Start the gussets that will help the bag stand up on its own.  At the bottom of the bag, 1/4 and 3/4 of the way across, I marked vertical lines in pencil.

Step 4: When I folded the bottom crease of the bag against the side seam of the bag, I get these triangles.  Now the lines I marked go side-to-side (only half-way, because I only marked the vertical lines on one side of the bag).  

Step 5:  Sew the gussets, by sewing off those triangle flaps.  The bottom of the bag should be a square once those lines are sewed; I also then sewed the triangle flaps down flat to the bag, so they don't flop around and get caught in the trail mix.  Plus, sewing them down to the bottom square of the bag give the bag that much more stability.

Step 6:  Fold over the top edge of the bag and sew to create a channel for a shoelace drawstring (we just happened to have extra shoelaces kicking around). 

Step 7:  Admire!  Notice how nicely the bags stands up by themselves, even with nothing inside!

But of course, we all know what's going inside:  trail mix.  Yum!