It's beginning to look a bit like Christmas

Spotlight currently has 50% off their range of Christmas-themed fabrics, so I took the opportunity to duck in and grab some this week. I have been wanting to make our own reusable gift bags but hadn't had the chance yet, so this was a good excuse to make the time! I hadn't worked out exactly what I needed yet, so I just picked out a few fabrics I liked and bought a metre or so of each.

I used three of them to make large, very simple draw-string 'Santa sacks' for the girls using some gold cord I also bought. I hope to get the time to embroider their names on the front at some stage before Christmas, but they know which one is theirs anyway (as soon as I told them what I was doing they took dibs on their favourites :-), so it's no big deal if I don't get it done until next year. They are folded up in the photo below, so they are actually a fair bit bigger as I knew I needed to get a T-ball kit into one of them this year! LOL.

I was going to make similar drawstring bags of various different sizes for the rest of our presents. However when I was experimenting with what sizes to make them with some of the presents I have stashed away, I very rapidly discovered an important lesson - drawstring (or tie-top) bags aren't child-proof! My kids would be under the tree in a flash, poking their noses into every bag, sussing out all the presents, LOL!

I really like furoshiki - the Japanese art of using fabric to wrap parcels and gifts - but after a little experimentation I discovered that I really need to use much less stiff fabrics than the ones I had bought. So I compromised and decided to use flat rectangular pieces of fabric, held in place with some of the masses of wire-edged ribbon I have been saving from previous gifts over the years.

Most of the fabric was see-through - not a desirable feature when a surprise gift is desired! - so I hit upon the idea of lining the rectangles with a plain fabric, which also then made them reversible so that we can use them for other gift-giving events as well! As you can see below, I just sewed the rectangles right sides together (leaving a gap in the seam), then turned them right-sides out and topped stitched around the edges.

Then I wrapped the presents as you would with paper, and held it in place with recycled wire-edged ribbon from my stash.

And if I use the plain reverse side, I can dress it up with non-Christmassy ribbon for a different look:

It was certainly quick and easy sewing! Now I just need to finish them off with simple gift tags made from cut-up cardboard cereal boxes, and I'm all done :-)

From now on I will also be searching thrift stores for large silk-style scarves, because I'd love to have a go at some of the furoshiki wraps with presents where I won't get the fabric back again. If you are a visual learner like me, you might like to check out some of these cool YouTube videos showing furoshiki wrapping. Neat, yeah?