So you’ve got your bento all packed up full of yummy food, but what are you going to carry it in?
Just carrying around a box is a bit awkward. Well, I’ve got an easy bag you can sew up in under an hour that makes a perfect bento bag.
A month ago, one of my favorite bloggers, Miss Lolly at LollyChops, held a contest to give away 3 fat quarters of adorable pear fabric that she designed. To enter you had to tell her what you would make with the fabric, and then actually make that item if you won and send her pictures.
To make a long story short, I won one of the fat quarters which I used to make a bento bag. I’ve mentioned bentos before here on LFM, as I’m slowly trying to learn the art of “bento-ing” so that when Squirrel needs to take a lunch to school I will already have the necessary skills under my belt to pack fun and healthy lunches for her.
This bag is a quick and easy way to make a cute little carrying case for a smaller sized bento. I saw bags similar to this while living in Japan and figured they couldn’t be too hard to make. I got online and did some research and found a fabulous tutorial on Cotton Spice which I used to make my bag, modifying the measurements to make the bag big enough to put a bento box in.

The tutorial provided on Cotton Spice is very thorough, so I won’t duplicate it here. I’ll just explain how to do the resizing so that your bag is big enough for a bento box to fit inside. Instead of the measurements called for on Cotton Spice, you will need to cut out two 18-inch squares and two 9-inch squares of material.
In the tutorial only 2 different fabrics are used, however I used 3–1 for the outside (Lolly’s pear fabric), 1 for the lining (lime green fabric), and 1 for the contrasting bottom (bright blue fabric). To do this I cut one 18-inch square of pear fabric and one 18-inch square of green fabric and then two 9-inch squares of blue fabric. You can do whatever your heart desires! You will also need a bit more cord or ribbon for your drawstring, about 2.5 to 3 yards (and then you can trim it down to get your desired size if needed).

Follow the Cotton Spice tutorial written until you sew in your contrasting bottom piece–then make sure it is centered (you won’t want to use the Cotton Spice measurements since those pieces are smaller).
Then when you sew down your corner edges, you will want to fold the corners back 5.75-inches (instead of 5-inches) and mark a line one inch from the corner edges (instead of 1/2-inch) and stitch on the lines back-stitching at the beginning and ending.
(I had to adjust my measurements a bit after this photo, but you get the idea, right?) The rest of the process is the same.
Once you have finished, all that is left to do is slip your bento inside,
cinch up the drawstrings, and be on your way!