A friend of mine asked if I had any (and I quote) "cute, affordable, and easy" gift wrapping ideas for Christmas. I had been asking myself the same thing. Her question inspired me to get to work, thinking of fun ways to wrap our gifts this year. I decided to look into DIY cloth gift wrapping for a completely customizable look.
I've seen these DIY cloth gift wrapping ideas for Christmas circling on Pinterest and they are so pretty!
DIY cloth gift wrapping is a sustainable wrapping method called Furoshiki. Furoshiki are a type of Japanese wrapping cloths traditionally used to wrap gifts and goods. I improvised slightly since I have not practiced this method of wrapping, but I made a video tutorial of my version if you would like to try the idea behind this style.
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Materials That You Will Need:
- Scissors
- Fabric - tea towels or cotton fabric
- Dried oranges
- Dried flower stem
- Measuring table
- Fabric cutter + mat
- Ribbon
I wanted to put my own spin on them and challenge myself to find fabric in the discount bin at my local craft store. I bought these flour sack cloths from Target for $3.99 and fabric from the discount bin at Joann's. For the accents, I used dried oranges that I had from this tutorial. The pompous stems were leftover from my Thanksgiving Place Cards costing around $18 for a pack of 100 on Amazon. I've also seen pompous grass type stems at Trader Joe's around the holidays for $3.99. You might want to check there as well!
I HIGHLY recommend a fabric cutter and self-healing mat for this project. It will cut your time down and make the overall project much easier. If you are using a rotary fabric cutter, my tips for that would be to hold the tool parallel to your fabric and to cut against a solid object. This will steady your line. You can use a large book, a ruler, or any object that is sturdy enough to line your tool against.
Gift Ideas for Her
How to Wrap a Gift With Fabric:
I used this video tutorial to help guide my DIY cloth gift wrapping, but I improvised based on the type of fabric that I was working with.
- Select the gift that you would like to start with then measure its length.
- Take the length of the gift and times it by 4. This means that for a 4x4 box, I will want my gift wrap to be a 16x16 square. Every piece of fabric that you use should be in the shape of a square. You will have to play with your fabric based on the shape of your gift, but the fabric looks best starting with a square shape.
- Once you have measured your gift and have the correct sizing for the fabric, take your cloth and cut it into the square. I recommend using a self-healing mat like the one linked in this post along with a fabric cutter. It will cut down your time and make the project a lot easier. I lined my fabric with my tape measure and cut along that for a more even cut. This helps if your hand tends to wander instead of cutting in a straight line. There are sewing tools to help with this, but I didn't have them on hand!
Kids Gift Ideas
4. Place the fabric on a flat surface at a diagonal angle.
5. Place your gift in the center of the fabric.
6. Starting with the side closest to you, fold the corner of the fabric over the gift overlapping it to the opposite side of the gift, and allow it to hang.
7. Pull the opposite corner of the fabric toward you, wrapping it around the gift, and flip the gift so that the tip of the fabric is now sitting on top of the gift.
8. One at a time, tuck the corners of the fabric on each side as you would wrapping paper.
9. Pull each of the corners of the fabric up to the top of the gift and tie in a loose knot. Secure it with a second knot.
10. Adjust your fabric by tucking any loose pieces under the knotted fabric and adjust it to your liking.
11. Add your dried oranges or your preferred gift accents to style as desired.
12. Repeat with each gift, varying your fabric in different sizes according to the size of each of your gifts.
Gift Ideas for the Baker
