Have you ever noticed after Chanuka, it takes much more time to wrap the gifts up nicely than it does to unwrap it?  Around here, it seems like it’s destroyed in about five seconds once the gift is opened, leaving a mess of paper behind!  When I was thinking about it this year, it seemed wasteful of time and resources, and I heard about a solution that would save time, money, and look nice.  What was it?  Fabric gift bags!

After making the one time investment of time, I’ll be able to use them year after year, while giving a gift in an attractive and festive way.  You know me, the queen of frugality :), of course I didn’t run out and buy some fabric for this project idea (and it’s fine if someone wants to do that!).  No, though it would be cheaper in the long run to make these from brand new fabric than buying rolls and rolls of wrapping paper over the years, I found yet another way to economize. 🙂

Here’s what I did.  Several months ago, I sorted through our costumes, and put several aside to donate.  But they never got donated, because I wanted to give them to a costume g’mach (clothing exchange), not to a typical second hand store, and that meant a separate trip, and I kept forgetting about it since the bag is down in the basement out of sight.  One of the costumes was a beautiful green taffetta and black velvet gown that I remade from something I was either given or bought at the thrift store for a few dollars.  I decided this would be perfect to use for the gift bags, since the fabric is great quality, and looks elegant and festive.

I took apart the gown, and cut several different size pieces from the taffetta.  That was so that I would have different sized bags, suitable for various sized gifts.  I sewed these into basic rectangles, and left the top gathered but open.  Then I took apart the velvet from the gown, and cut/sewed it into long thin strips.  I attached the black velvet strips to the top center of each bag, so that it could be easily closed (initially I was going to use a ribbon, but knowing the reality of our family, it would be lost very fast).

They look really nice!  I made a total of seven, since that’s what I could squeeze out of the gown, and I think that will be enough.  One is very large, two are pretty small, and the other four are a standard medium size.  What’s nice about it is that if necessary, I could use the same one more than once in an evening, for two different people, since once a family member opens the gift, they don’t need it anymore.  The kids who have seen them think they look great, and I put them away before the other kids came home, so that they’ll have a little bit more of a surprise when we pull them out to use them.

I didn’t watch the clock, so I don’t know how long these took.  It seemed to go extremely fast, with the velvet strips taking the bulk of the time – it was definitely under two hours from start to finish, but I can’t be more precise than that.  My 8 year old daughter enjoyed helping me, and since I was in the middle of where my kids were and interacting with them as I did this, it was like keeping my hands busy while I was hanging around with them, so I wasn’t conscious of it being like another thing I needed to do.

Avivah