Tutorial: Reusable sandwich wrap

I love taking lunch from home--healthy and cheap--but I don't like all the packaging waste. I go through 2 or 3 ziplock baggies every day, so last weekend I made some reusable, washable sandwich wraps and snack bags. I'll show you how to make the sandwich wraps today, and tomorrow we'll take a look at the snack bags.

Quick and easy! They were also free, as I was able to use up some fabric scraps that were just taking up space. Here's how I did it:

Reusable Sandwich Wrap

This is the size for a 1/2-half sandwich.

Materials:
two squares of fabric, 9" x 9"
two pieces of narrow ribbon, 6" each

Sew the two fabric squares, right sides together, almost all the way around all 4 sides. Leave a small opening for turning right side out.

Turn right side out, press.

Insert one of the ribbons into the opening, extending out diagonally from the corner. Sew the ribbon into place, and continue edge-stitching around the entire square.

This top-stitching eliminates the need to slip-stitch the opening closed, and it will also keep the square in nice shape when it is washed.

Here's a photo the square with the first ribbon sticking out from the left, and the top-stitching finished. Now measure in 3 1/2" from the opposite corner, heading in diagonally from the corner. Attach the second ribbon at that spot.

At the base of the second ribbon, sew a very small button hole. Should look like this.

The button hole will double your use of the sandwich wrap, by making it reversible. Now, if one side gets a little funky, you can pull the ribbon through the button hole and use the other side for a time or two (depending on how goopy your sandwiches are...) before throwing the wrap into the wash. Here's a photo of the ribbon pulled through to the reverse side.

Now here's how the wrap works. (These photos are using the reverse side--the blue side--of the wrap. The photo at the top of the post shows a sandwich wrapped up with the green side out.)

Place the sandwich inside the wrap, next to the button hole. (Sorry, my "sandwich" is in plastic wrap for the photos, because it's just a piece of bread cut in half with paper in between pretending to be fake meat. It would have fallen apart without something around it. But a real sandwich, held together with some mayo and mustard, did fine when I made my lunch this morning.)

Fold the sides over, and then flip the whole thing toward the remaining point of the wrap.

Tie a tidy bow, and voila! No more baggies needed for the sandwich.