We are all more and more environmentally aware these days and reducing waste is something I think we all strive for. I read the other day that Brits throw away the equivalent of 108 million rolls of Christmas wrapping paper each year! In our house we’ve always been paper smoothers and reusers (actually that’s a lie, I’m the paper smoother – I just hate waste and drive everyone mad as I go round collecting wrapping paper as they remove it!)

One way to reduce this paper waste is to give gifts in reusable gift bags. Store bought paper gift bags can be used multiple times before they eventually get too crumpled or fall apart. Cloth bags will last for years and years. I’ve been experimenting with a few different methods to make reusable fabric gift bags with some cute Christmas print fabrics from Minerva.

You can find details of my reusable gift bag experiments over on the Minerva blog, there is a full tutorial for the square rice bag and links to great tutorials from my blogging friends for all the other bags I tried.

Minerva have a fabulous selection of Christmas print fabrics at great prices but you can also make reusable bags like this from a patchwork of festive fabrics from your stash, or even from plain old fabrics in festive colours. An old red shirt for example would be ideal, and you’d get several small or medium bags from just one shirt.

Julie

You might like to check out my tutorial to make the easiest reusable gift bags here:

Or how about this gift bag from an old T-shirt upcycling idea: