Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 10. Furoshiki.

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 Once more this year, we are bringing you twelve days of Christmas ideas - both handmade gifts and gifts for makers.

Today we present the simple but beautiful Japanese fabric gift wrapping technique, Furoshiki. Using basic shapes of fabric, you can simply dress a gift. Plus, the gift wrap is reusable, either as gift wrap again or as a tea-towel or napkins or any other fabric-y plan you may devise. So it's environmentally friendly, too - score!


For this project, we have cut a half metre of this 110cm wide Japanese linen/cotton gingham. We then cut one piece to 70x50cm, leaving the remainder piece measuring 40 x 50cm) and sewed a double fold hem around all edges. Here they are with bonus Lego man for scale, courtesy of my lovely 6 year old assistant.


Since there's plenty of wine changing hands at this time of year, we thought the wine bottle wrap would be a good one to start with. 

 Take the larger piece of fabric. Turn it to landscape, then fold the bottom third of the fabric up over the bottle:


Scrunch the fabric in either side of the bottle, and tie a knot at the front. Too easy!
 

(No Lego men were harmed in the writing of this blog post.)

The remainder piece of fabric can be used to wrap smaller gifts like these Merchant and Mills wide bow scissors and needles.

Pop your goodies in the middle:


Fold up the bottom third of fabric, then fold the top third over the top:



Gather up the fabric each side of the gift and tie a single knot to secure.

 
This is an easy place to start, but if you just search the internet, there are loads of Furoshiki tutorials to be found online.

 Happy wrapping and giving!

- Fiona & Jane xx

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