New insert for Transformers lunchbag

The Transformers bag, complete with falling-apart lining.

Back in August 2011 I made my youngest daughter (then 13) a new lunchbag for school.  I found a great tutorial here, showed my daughter and she helped me design the bag the way she wanted it.  After all, if I made it and she hated it, well, that just wouldn't work at all!  My daughter loves Transformers.  Especially Bumblebee.  He is her absolute favourite.  So we decided on a black and yellow bag with a freezer-stenciled Transformers logo on it.  I made a few changes from the original tutorial.  I stenciled, rather than appliqued, I made a short handle on mine because that is what my daughter wanted, and I made sure that I made the stay-cold lining completely removable so that the bag could be laundered weekly.  This bag, by the way, has been washed almost every week since the beginning of September, that is why the logo is looking a little faded.  I haven't asked my daughter if she will want to carry a Transformers lunchbag around when she is in high school next year, my guess is 'yes', she's cool like that!  If she does want a new one, at least I know that I'll be able to just move the liner over!

The bag itself has been kind of holding the liner together for months.

Well, because the material I used originally for my lining doesn't sew well on the machine, I ended up just perforating it, not good at all! I tried to hand sew it together.  That lasted only a short while so I tried masking tape (you don't see the outside of the liner when it is in the bag).  Again, that only lasted a little while but this liner keeps her ice pack cold for so long that I didn't want to give it up so I bought some aluminium duct tape and used that.  At least that looked better when I removed the liner, but as you may have guessed, that didn't hold up either.  I decided that it was time to break down and make a new one.  I found this nifty vinyl type cloth-y stuff in the remnant bin of the fabric store.  Because it is a remnant, I have no idea what it actually is, but it sews up nicely and almost looks like canvas on the non-vinyl side.  I also had some heat resistant batting that my mother-in-law had given me ages ago to make potholders with.  I used what I had leftover after making the potholders.  I figured, if it is heat resistant, it will probably work for cold as well.

See!  I wasn't kidding about the horrible shape the liner was in!

So I did the best I could at measuring the old liner.  I didn't want to make it any worse than it already was just in case this new one didn't work.  I wanted to keep the old one to put back in the lunchbag, if needed.  After my (only slightly  inaccurate) measuring, I sewed it up.  I realized that I didn't have enough for the little cover flap, so I added that on after.

New lining, cut and ready to sew.

The 'before' and 'after' bag liners.

It isn't as stiff as the old liner so it looks odd, but believe me, it fits great.

With the little flap I had to add on.  I feel that the contents stay colder longer with this addition.

She has taken it to school twice so far and says it works great.  I threw the old liner out last night!


 I had a thought.  Since the vinyl-ish stuff looks like it has some type of fabric base, I wonder if this liner is machine washable.  I've washed my potholders many times, so I know that the other material is.  Using what little scraps I had left of the 'potholder' material (I have lots of the vinyl stuff left), I made a little test scrap to toss in the laundry.  We'll see how that testing goes,  laundry day isn't until Saturday.

The finished bag looks remarkably similar to the bag at the beginning of this post!

The new lining is in this, honest!  I am glad it looks the same from the outside.  There would probably be a problem somewhere if it didn't!

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