Thursday 8 May 2014

Thermal Cooking Bag

I have been making (and at times struggling to make) a thermal cooking bag (similar to an old fashioned hay box) as can be found over at Elaine Collier's blog here

Having found some nice but thin duvet material and cut out the first circle, I thought it might not be able to cope with the strain and instead, found an old but nice pair of curtains. The label had gone so I had no idea if they were 100% cotton or something else.

I chose the pan to be used in the bag and decided to test drive the hot base of it, on the bottom cushion pad, before proceeding to stuff it and finish sewing. It worked fine.

Herewith all my circles cut out:
The nearly finished article:
The main problem I found was that the material I chose, had a slight stretch to it down one side, something I omitted to find out before beginning - SO CHECK YOUR CHOSEN MATERIAL FIRST!

Also, both circles were not true circles (material again rather than Elaine's instructions), which caused me problems. Another area was that my inner circle for some strange reason, was a little too big, so had to be adapted, hence some zigzag over-sewing:
Just when I was getting going, I ran out of thread so had to wait until we next went to town:(
We did not have any polystyrene balls and as the point of this was to make it as cheap as possible (apart from paying for the pattern from Elaine), we opted to break up lots of packing polystyrene to fill it with, despite anticipating lots of mess and hair pulling moments. I wasn't wrong:(

Giving in, we ordered 2 cubic feet of flame retardant, mixed sized bean bag beads from here (had no idea how much we needed, half as it turned out!). If you order 1 cubic feet, that should be enough, depending on what size bag you make. More later!







5 comments:

  1. Well, you live and learn! I had no idea what on earth one was until I read Elaines blog. I wouldnt have thought it would be possible to work but it did, amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What an absolutely brilliant idea. I have never seen this before, though have knwn about hay box cooking for years. I shall have to look into this closely. Thanks for sharing.
    Gill

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anne and Gill - well like you say Gill, very similar to a hay box (even have a link to a modern version of those on the post above). It does work as I shall post about next time.

      Delete
  3. Thank you for the advice at the down to earth site re wonder bags & boxes.
    Will do some research.

    Best wishes
    Angela

    ReplyDelete

I love hearing from you, will read all your comments and try and answer any questions you leave. Please leave comments in English. Don't forget to come back and read my reply! All comments are moderated so if you try to link it to a commercial web site, it will not be published.