Drawstring Birthday Bags

About a year ago I got an idea to move to reusable Christmas gift wrap. The idea being that for gifts given at home we would no longer use paper which is on a package for just a few moments before it is ripped up and thrown away. So I have been milling around with this idea for a very long time. Recently I was at the fabric store and they were running a sale on Christmas fabric so I bought some. It of course ended up in the piles above because this year we will not be home for the holidays and have decided not to buy gifts for each other due the recent purchase of a new car (awesome by the way! We love our new Forester). It also doesn't make sense to ship gifts in reusable wrappings to then require people to mail everything back to me.

BUT!

I found some cute birthday fabric while I was at the fabric store and since Greg is a December baby I thought I could try out my idea there first. I decided to make drawstring bags. They will hold gifts very nicely and would be the most logistically easy to figure out compared to my fabric wrapping paper idea. The internet is full of drawstring bag tutorials so this is a very simplified version. Please note that I wouldn't normally choose a fabric that is so garish but now that I have a kid I always wonder what a small child might think is cool. I think someday Vivi will be excited to see the Birthday Bags come out in February for her birthday. I did try to pick something gender neutral.

I only got .75 yards, it was all that was left on the bolt. I folded it in half and cut it into two pieces for two bags. For each bag I serged up the raw side edges. The other edges were manufacturer finished so I didn't deal with them.

Next on the edges that will be the top of the bag I folded the top over and stitched it down to leave a channel. This is where the string will go.

Then I folded the bag in half (since I was using one long piece of fabric), right sides together and stitched up the sides stopping right where the folded over piece starts.

Then I folded out the bottom corners and stitched across so the bottom is square. I like this effect but it can always be left out. That flap can be cut off.

Lastly I turned the bag right side out and threaded long pieces of ribbon through the holes left on the sides where I didn't stitch. I did 2 overlapping strings so that I could use them to tie the bags shut (so no one can peek at their gifts!).

I purposefully left the strings really long so that when a small gift is inside the bag it can be folded in half and the strings can wrap around and tie into a nice bow/bundle. Here are the bags, one with a small gift and one with a larger flat item inside.

I love the way these turned out. They went right under the tree where we always keep Greg's gifts until his Birthday. I will definitely be making some Christmas draw string bags. They were just too easy not to.

And here is the daily cutie. In her highchair waiting to eat breakfast yesterday morning. She was my model for a project I am finishing up tonight!