Reusable Travel Coffee Filter Pouches

This is a project that David has been kicking around for a while. He travels frequently for business, and though he usually stays in pretty decent hotels, he consistently has one complaint: the in-room coffee service. It's really great to have a personal-size coffee maker in the room, because, really there are times when you just can't wait for coffee.  But, that convenience can be offset by a certain lack of . . . savory-ness.

Because David is leaving for London tonight, this project got gently shoved to the front of my project list.

David is a coffee snob. Let's just be perfectly blunt on that point. He has been roasting his own coffee for a couple of years now, perfecting his own personal blend and spreading the Coffee Joy among friends and family.  He is so much of a snob, he won't even allow for grinding the beans the night before and setting the timer to automatically brew in the morning. The beans must be ground moments before being gently spooned into the coffee machine basket and immediately brewed.

So, you can imagine how disappointing a pot of freshly-brewed hotel-room coffee from a plastic bag might be to someone like David.  

He's been (gently) bugging me for several months to make some reusable coffee filter bags that he can use on the road, to be filled with his own personally blended, personally roasted, personally ground coffee. (I told him that taking a coffee grinder to London was just a bit over the top; he's just going to have to settle for pre-ground grounds).

So this morning he came home from picking up his dry cleaning and handed me a Jo-Ann's bag that just happened to have materials for this project. (Don't you love a man who can self-sufficiently shop at Jo-Ann's?). So, you know, I kinda had to put aside other projects to work on this project.  And here it is in a nutshell . . .

Unbleached cotton fabric, of a fairly loose weave.  Roughly cut it into 4" x 10" rectangles.  Double-fold and seam all four edges.

Sew one side of a strip of velcro on the right side of one short end.

Fold up into a pouch with right-sides out, and sew up the side seams.

Sew the other strip of velcro on the "flap" remaining.

Tada!  A reusable coffee filter pouch just about the right size for those personal coffee makers.

I actually whipped up three for this particular trip, and still had plenty of material left to make more.

Obviously, a more skilled seamstress will be able to make a better finished product. I'll let David post a review of the performance of this particular project when he gets back from London . . .