I started seeing on blogs and Pinterest about using fabric for gift wrap at the beginning of the holiday season.

My first thought was, “that’s expensive gift wrap”. Seriously. You can use the funny papers. Kids will not care!

But then I started thinking about reducing my stash of holiday fabric that I’ve accumulated over the years and it would be kind of nice to make hand crafted bags for my hand crafted gifts.

These are easy. And you can make them in any size you want. And you can make one in less than an hour. Probably in less than 1/2 hour. So you still have time before Christmas!

I’m going to show you how to make one bag and give you sizes to cut fabric for two more bags. These seams are “clean finished” because I don’t like my seams to ravel. And I’m hoping that these will be reused over the years.

Here goes. The first bag. It’s final size is 14 1/2” high by 9” wide.

I made the drawstring for the bag from 1 1/2″ wide length of fabric. I actually found this bias strip that I had made for some other project and this was left over. Win! I pressed the fabric strip in half, opened up, then pressed the sides into the middle, folded those sides together and stitched close to the open edge. If you have one of those bias tape makers you can use that. Or you could just use a 1/2″ ribbon.

Cut a piece of non-directional fabric 31” high by 10” wide.

Press under both long sides of the bag 1/4″ then stitch.

Next, press under 1/4″ on each short end.

then press under 1″.

And stitch close to the 1/4″ folded edge.

Do the other short end and now you have the pocket for the drawstring.

Fold the bag up, right sides together, matching the drawstring pockets.

Stitch both sides with a 1/4″ seam. Stopping at the bottom of the drawstring pocket. Make sure you do a little backward stitch to secure the seam on both ends.

Turn right side out.

My drawstring is 42″ for this bag. That’s actually too long. The drawstring should be about 3 times the width of the bag so a 27″ length would work. Tie knots on both ends.

Voila! Done! Put your gift inside.

If you would like a slightly smaller bag, for a 12″ high x 9″ wide, cut your fabric 27″ height x 10″ wide. Same directions as above. Make the drawstring 27″.

And one more size for a 8″ x 8″ bag. Cut a piece of fabric 19″ height x 10″ wide. The drawstring should be 24”. I used a 1/2″ ribbon for the drawstring.

If you would like a particular size of bag, just comment or email me with the size. I’ll give you the measurements.

Happy sewing and gifting!