holidays

It’s a Wrap: Reusable Gift Wrap Tutorial

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird
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Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

Two of the most consistently popular topics from my Pinterest boards lately have been sustainable packaging and furoshiki, so I thought I’d combine those two topics with a timely twist and explore sustainable gift wrap.

You’ve probably heard the oft-quoted statistic that if every American family wrapped three presents in reused materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. That statistic is kind of overwhelming when you think about it, but just like with anything else, you do what you can with what you have where you are. For me, that starts with using re-usable gift wrapping whenever possible.

A couple years ago I switched from using wrapping paper for most of our holiday gifts to using cloth wrapping, and while we’re not perfect about it, it does feel really good not to be throwing away bags of barely-used wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

The simplest way to wrap gifts using fabric is just to use a square or rectangle of fabric, either hemmed or cut with pinking shears, which you can use pretty much the same way you’d use a piece of paper to wrap a gift, and then tie it up with ribbon (or get fancy with furoshiki).

The first year we used fabric wrapping, I made simple bags (basically just a piece of fabric folded in half and hemmed on two sides) that can be tied off with ribbon. They sew up fast, work great and are still going strong. If you want to get fancier, try making a bag with an attached ribbon, a drawstring bag or this cute fabric gift bag with a built-in ribbon from A Quilter’s Table – it’s next on my list of ideas to try.

This year I decided to try to make some wrapping with the ribbon built-in, to make wrapping extra simple. It’s very simple – just a square of fabric with ribbons attached at two opposite corners – but it wraps up into a pretty official-looking gift.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

My first attempt started with a 36×36″ (about 91.5 cm square) piece of fabric, which would be great for bigger gifts, but kind of overwhelmed a book, which is a pretty common gift from me. So on version 2.0, I started with a 20×20″ (about 51 cm square) piece of fabric, which was much more manageable (and, if you’re starting with a yard of fabric, leaves you with a 16″ wide strip you can turn into a gift bag). You can scale the square up or down depending on what you’re wrapping.

For each wrap, you’ll need:
– 20″x20″ piece of fabric (or size of your choice)
– 4 feet of matching ribbon
– thread

A note on fabric: I used regular old cotton, because that’s what I had on hand, but it might be nice to use a fabric with a little sheen to it, like Spoonflower’s Organic Cotton Sateen – just don’t use anything too thick or it will be hard to wrap.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

A note on ribbon: I used 1.5″ and 2″ wide satin ribbon, because it has a nice shine and it’s what they had at the fabric outlet I frequent. To keep the ribbon from fraying, you can melt the ends ever-so-slightly with a flame – now, normally putting me and a flame together is a bad idea, but I managed to seal up the ends of the ribbons without incinerating anything – the trick is to put the ribbon near the flame but not in it, and keep it moving. WikiHow (scroll down to the third option) has pretty clear instructions. Whatever method you choose, start with sharp sewing scissors so you get a clean cut, and cut at a 45-degree angle, either across the ribbon or with the ribbon folded in half to make a notch. (Btw, if you need tips for tying a pretty bow with that ribbon, check out this video.)

Here’s what you do:

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

1. Trim off any selvage (side note: The British “selvedge” just makes so much more sense than the American spelling, doesn’t it?) and cut your fabric into a square.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

2. With the right-side of the fabric down, press up 1/2″ all the way around.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

3. Because I wanted to practice mitred corners, I took the extra step and sewed mitred corners. I could try to explain to you how to sew a mitred corner, but By Hand London does it much better. If you find mitred corners daunting or fussy, skip it and just make square corners. Most people will be so impressed that you made wraps that they won’t care about the corners. If you’re not doing mitred corners, just fold and press another 1/2″ all the way around to give it a nice finished edge.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

4. Fold one corner toward the wrong side if the fabric, making a little triangle, until the base of the triangle you’re creating matches the width of your ribbon (just look at the picture; I can’t explain it).

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

5. Pin the ribbon on top of your corner/triangle, folding the raw edges of the ribbon under. Make sure if your ribbon has a wrong side that the wrong side is facing up (so your fabric wrong-side and your ribbon wrong-side are the same direction).

6. Repeat on the opposite corner.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

7. Whether you’ve mitred or not, sew all the way around the hem, ducking in on the ribbon corners to follow the edge of the ribbon.

That’s it! It took me about an hour to make one wrap, but that time included figuring out what I was doing as I went along, setting up my Spotify playlist to accompany my sewing, burning myself on an iron, discovering the machine was threaded wrong and having to rip out my seam and start over…so, really just a typical day sewing for me, but I think it would get faster with each iteration.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

To wrap, lay your item diagonally in the middle of the cloth. Fold in the top and bottom (the non-ribbon corners). Then criss-cross the ribbon corners over the back (you can tie them in a half-knot, but it seemed bulky to me). Pull them around to the front and tie in a pretty bow. If your item is smaller, wrap the ribbons around in the other direction, too, before tying.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

Note: If I cared terribly about surprises, I might line this wrapping, in which case you don’t need to do mitred corners; you can just put the two pieces of fabric right-sides-together and sew them together, leaving a little gap to turn it right-side-out and then top-stitch it all the way around. You could even make it reversible by lining it with a contrasting fabric. It will be a little bulkier when wrapping, though.

If you’re not up for sewing, there are lots of other options for re-used or reusable wrapping, from magazine pages to mason jars. Or try wrapping gifts in pre-made tea towels like these from Trader Joe’s or IKEA – or, you know, something fancy. There’s even a tutorial for making pretty no-sew fabric bags using double-sided tape, if you’re a seat-of-the-pantser.

Lastly, if you want something sustainable inside the wrapping, too, consider these gift ideas from Imperfect Foods – or, as I heard it put the other day: Eat it, drink it, spend it, burn it.

Whatever and however you celebrate, I hope you have a fabulous end to 2019 and a happy, healthy 2020!

Fabrics used:
The Lost Mitten Barkcloth
Smoochies
Frosty Frolic
See more of my wintry designs here.

Reusable fabric gift wrap tutorial by Lellobird

Tea Towel Gift Pairings

Bottle gift wrapped with Orange, Orange, Lemon, Lime tea towel by Lellobird
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Spoonflower has 50% off on fat quarters for the next week (through November 8) – which means this is the perfect time to scoop up some tea towels for holiday gifting.

Better yet, pair your tea towels with a book, plant, baked goods or another item and use the towel as an eco-friendly wrapping – you’ll save the paper, and it’s like getting two gifts in one. Plus, if you start now, you might actually have time to sew up the towels before the holidays (unless you’re a really champion procrastinator like me, and then you’ll be hemming the night before your gift exchange).

With all the tea towel choices out there, you can find something that pairs with almost any gift idea or recipient – the hardest part may be choosing which one to use! (Or giving it away!)

Tea towels pair naturally with food- and kitchen-themed gifts, but anything small-ish will fit – here are some of my favorite ideas:

Plant gift wrapped with Windowsill tea towel by Lellobird

Bottle gift wrapped with Orange, Orange, Lemon, Lime tea towel by Lellobird

Cookbook gift wrapped with Bakers Gonna Bake tea towel by Lellobird

Jar of honey gift wrapped with Honeycomb tea towel by Lellobird

Book gift wrapped with Jane's Words tea towel by Lellobird

Speaking of furoshiki, there are a ton more furoshiki ideas, plus instructions for hemming your towels, on the My Poppet website.

I put together a Pinterest board with examples of all the above uses plus a few more – check it out here.

Happy gifting!

Spring color: Watercolor egg garland

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Finished watercolor eggs

Today feels like kind of a dark day in the world with the news out of Brussels, so I thought I’d share a cheerful springtime craft to try and counter some of the sadness. Sometimes it just feels good to lose yourself for a little while in making something beautiful.

Fall is really my favorite season, but secretly I admire Spring’s enthusiasm, with plants and birds and color popping up all over the place. This garland captures a little of that exuberance. We made eggs since we were in an Easter frame of mind, but you could use the same technique to make butterflies, flowers, geometric shapes or whatever strikes your fancy.

Inspired by Emily Sanford’s Spoonflower blog post about blocking off areas with tape before painting with watercolor, we’ve been experimenting with negative space and washes of abstract color around here.

Someone recently gave us a giant pad of drawing paper, so we used that and cut each sheet into two 9×12″ pieces. It was sturdy enough to stand up to the watercolor.

First we cut strips of painter’s tape the width of our paper. The only tape I had on hand was really wide, so I cut it into narrower strips. As long as I had to cut it anyway, I used the fancy craft scissors on some of the strips to get a scalloped edge. We used plain blue painter’s tape because it’s what we had on hand, but other kinds of art tape would work, too.

Speak softly and carry a big brush.

I’m trying to learn from the kids how to loosen up my painting style (kids are great mentors when it comes to art!), so we used big brushes, lots of water and lots of color. While the paint was still wet, we sprinkled sea salt in a couple places for special effects. All ages had fun playing with the washes of color and ways they combined.

The big reveal: Peeling off the tape.

Once the paint dried (that step took almost 24 hours, so plan ahead), we peeled off the tape to reveal the white stripes on our eggs-to-be. The paper on the left is mine; the right is kid-made. Our tape took off a tiny bit of the top layer of the paper, but not enough to bother me.

Painted papers.

Then I cut an egg-template, which you can download here — since it took me a solid half-hour of fiddling to make what I considered the perfect egg shape (they’re trickier than they look!), I figured I’d save you some time. I put lots of eggs on one page in case we wanted to color and cut out more eggs, but you really only need to cut out one for this project. Each egg is 4.5 inches tall.

Tracing the eggs.

Lay the cut-out space over your painted paper and decide where you want your egg to be. I like using this method because you get to see exactly what the egg will look like. When you’re happy with the design, trace lightly around the inside of the cut-out shape with pencil, then cut along the pencil line.

You could attach the cut-out shapes on yarn, baker’s twine or ribbon. I just hung mine up with tiny clothespins, since we have an existing ribbon strung up that we use for garlands throughout the year, switching out the items.

Watercolor egg garland

The bunnies are traced from the shape of an old notepad I had and cut out of scrapbook paper and other random papers we had around the house. The whole thing is happiness on a string!