I may be addicted… Gingercake has the cutest patterns that I feel the need to try them all. The latest creation was her Art Tote. Again, I switched it up a bit to make the bag out of laminated cotton.

Her patterns are so detailed and easy to follow, but this one tested my attention span 🙂 That’s a lot of pieces to cut, layer, attach and sew together and then do it again for the inside… but it was well worth it. I just spread it out over a few afternoons…

This project was for Tate, one of my favorite little toddlers. He comes to work with his mom now and then, and they have a tiny house, so an easy place to store art supplies seemed like a good fit. And for his mom’s sake, there are no trucks on this bag (though I did find him crayons that come in a truck shaped case).

One of my favorite parts of making things for kids is the freedom to have even more fun matching prints. In this case I managed to work in owls, polka dots & madras!

Since ironing laminated cotton is not ideal, I skipped lining each piece with interfacing, figuring the lamination would do the trick and it seems to be just fine. Here are all the pockets attached and the sides attached to the bottom of the bag:

I’d attempted making gift bags, once before and failed at attaching all the sides, so I appreciated the detailed (and this time successful) directions!

Just when I thought I was done, I realized I had to do the same thing again (minus the pockets, well…minus most of the pockets…) for the lining. Ta da, two successful bags:

Stuffed together and finished with a cute handle, I had one very cute bag with pockets for paper, stickers, crayons, scissors, pretty much any and all art supplies you could want. (And no, I did not give the scissors to the two year old, that was for demonstration purposes only).

Though, I think my favorite part is the secret pocket inside. This madras print was so darn cute and I was inspired by the patchwork to match up a 2nd square to get a pocket. Because really, who doesn’t want a secret pocket?

I’m finally getting to the initial motivation for sewing with laminated cotton – reusable snack bags!

I found a couple patterns for lunch bags & snack bags – the other lunch bag is still in the works because so far it’s the worst pattern I’ve ever worked with and I can’t bring myself to finish the set… But luckily I was also using a Gingercake pattern for a super cute lunch bag & snack bag and it was a dream to work from.

The lunch bag itself is child-sized with an easy to grab handle. It even has pockets on the sides to hold a fork or two.

I went with a fairly neutral green dot fabric on the outside, with cute dinosaurs on the inside – it is for a toddler after all. I made a couple different patterns of small snack bags, including a drawstring one that my nephew decided was better used as a hat.

And because I can’t resist, here are a couple photos of the bag in use by the cutest nephew around!