These are two of this year’s Christmas gifts wrapped up in furoshiki cloths that I made from thrifted satin. I really like the double-knotted red one. All I wound up doing for these is cutting out the largest possible square from some item of satin clothing from Goodwill Outlet and then quickly serging the edge to prevent fraying.
This summer I made fabric gift bags for all the birthday gifts. That was fairly time consuming, so I have been researching alternative gift wrapping today just in time for Christmas. I had come across this page before that illustrates a bunch of Japanese wrapping techniques by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment but hadn’t done anything about it yet.
I am totally smitten with these! I wrote up a one-page (mostly plagiarized from the Japanese) description of furoshiki and printing a modified version of the Japanese tying techniques diagram on the other side. I passed out a few of these sheets, along with some actual furoshiki for Christmas this year. (I modified the diagram to make the text legible and made it black lines on a white background so it is a little more printer-ink friendly.)
I also found a tutorial for mitered corner furoshiki here. I’ll use these instructions to make some, although I think 35″ square is a little too big, since most of the gifts I give or receive are pretty small. Most of the ones I made were more like 18″ – 24″. This is such a good project to make out of thrifted skirts, pillowcases, and sheets, which can produce a large piece of continuous fabric.
