Padded Packing Cubes

My husband travels for work and most of his trips are of a longer duration…weeks vs. days. He stays at the those extended stay-type of hotels which have kitchenettes and laundry facilities and packs things like full-sized toiletries, small packages of laundry detergent, etc. In an ongoing effort to perfect his packing, he has experimented with different plastic containers and zip lock bags, trying to contain all of his stuff in a manner that gets the stuff to his destination in one piece and protects his clothing from potential leaks in case something doesn’t make it. So far, the plastic bins he’s tried to use have not worked, so I decided to come up with something else. I knew whatever I came up with needed to have structure, needed to be big enough to hold full-sized toiletries, needed to contain leaks if possible, needed to be washable, and, or course, needed to be reusable and easily packable. When I started thinking about what would be most useful, I kept picturing an oversized dopp kit, so that’s what I aimed for.

Materials: I’ve made a number of bags over the years and I’m really a fan of Pellon Fusible Foam (“FF78F1”), which is fusible on one side for adding structure and stability to bags, so I decided to start here for this experimental project. I buy it by the bolt, so I had plenty on hand. (Honestly, if I had had double-sided fusible foam for this project, that would have been even better!) Then I looked at my home decor fabric stash and figured out what would work and wouldn’t be too feminine. I had some tobacco colored bull denim, some beige patterned polyester home dec fabric, some green home dec fabric, and a leftover polyester shower curtain. Finally, I used the last of my beige No. 5 zipper by the yard and then supplemented with white from my stash. Here was my thinking as I settled on the fabric choices: bull denim is thick, foam would provide structure and a layer of protection for the contents, as well as absorbing any potential leaks, and finally, the polyester shower curtain/home decor fabrics would add a little bit of water resistance, just in case. Materials sorted out, I got to work.

An hour or so later, I had my first “cube”.

Process: For each version, I cut one large piece of both exterior fabric, lining fabric, and foam. all of them were attached to the zipper, creating a tube with a zipper. (There was no seam opposite the zipper, and the zipper tape is NOT sandwiched between the lining and the exterior fabric, if that makes sense.) Then, with the zipper open, the tube was turned inside out and then the side seams sewn closed, perpendicular to the zipper. Finally, I boxed the four corners, flipped the bag right side out, and it was done.

Since my husband knew this was a prototype project, I took the opportunity to try my hand at covering the exposed raw edges with bias tape. Before boxing the corners, I sewed bias tape to the seam, then I sewed bias tape to each of the seams created by boxing the corners. It was good experience, but I think I need more practice to get a good result with such a thick seam (two layers of foam plus four layers of fabric). I am definitely intrigued by this type of internal finish and will definitely be trying it again.

One of the other things I tried was adding little pull tabs by the zipper ends on one of the bags. I think I’ll be playing around with those some more, too. I really like the way they function.

The sizes of these bags were limited by the materials I had on hand: things like the length of beige zipper and the size of the remnants, but they ended up being a good size for his needs. Each of them is unique because I tried new things with each one and I like different features of each one. (If I make more, I can incorporate all of the lessons I learned into one amazing bag!) All in all, I think this was a worthwhile effort and, as my husband heads out tomorrow for three weeks, I’ll find out soon enough if they actually work as intended!

My pro-tip for this post: Be brave! You can do more than you think and you can do it with stuff you have. You learn from everything you try, so try!