Before & After

This, believe it or not, was once a curtain. Pretty funky, non? I can only imagine its brightness led to a few sleepless nights for the child who had this hanging in his or her bedroom, thereby leading his or her parents to dump it at their local Salvation Army. As a regular visitor to my local Salvation Army, I was overjoyed when I found this vibrant swath of canvasy-type material, and I knew that one day it would serve a greater purpose in our lives. Well, this unfortunate curtain has been reborn...

...into this lunchbag that Finny has been toting to SK for the past week. What I love about it, besides the lack of the nasty (and I'm quite sure, toxic) smell of new vinyl, is that it is completely washable. One of my least favourite chores was opening my kids' lunchboxes at the end of a school day to get a whiff of vinyl and spilled apple juice that has soaked through to the foam insulator - that smell lasts the entire school year! So I wanted to make an easy-to-wash, good-for-the-environment, healthy-for-kids alternative. The dimensions I used can be found here, and to this pattern I added a mesh water bottle holder to the side, and easy-to-carry handles to the top. Don't worry, there is plenty of curtain left - hmm, lunchbags for all??