BLOG COMMENTS: Homemade Gift Bag Party Meeting Recap

GreenMoms Coastside, had their 4th Annual Holiday Gift Bag Making Party. This year we were even greener than before! In previous years some people donated the fabric and we bought some from the fabric store. This year we got most of our fabric, and ribbon, from some generous people on freecycle.org or from our own closets. We were more prepared to green it up this year.

There were thirteen of us moms plus three daughters working away in assembly line fashion as we shared stories, ideas, and ate some yummy appetizers. Our work stations consisted of fabric cutting, ribbon cutting, ironing top folds, matching ribbon, and sewing. There were some technical difficulties with fussy sewing machines that slowed us down, but when we were finished, we had sewn 130 gift bags! That’s ten bags each! It was a long night, but well worth it.

Have a look at our party photos click here for our Photo Album. You’ll get a sense of how we made the bags. We used a method very similar to what you see at this link (click here) with just a few variations:

1. We used just one piece of fabric per bag and folded it in half with the folded edge as one of the sides. This way we only had to sew 2 sides and it was one continuous fast (down one side holding the ribbon, turn at the corner, then sewn across the bottom.

2. We didn’t use pinking shears for the top edge (good idea to speed things up). We did a double fold at the top, ironed it down and did a decorative zig-zag.

We do this every year to help our moms cut back on wrapping paper waste. Using a cloth gift bag is beautiful and inspires others to do the same. It encourages the gift receiver to keep the bag and re-use it. Sometimes, the bags are so nice that people give a gift to a family member in the bag and then ask for it back! They are hard to give away, but they also make good holidays gifts themselves! I plan on giving a few in a gift bag to my mom and mother in-law as gifts. I am also going to share the love and give a few to the lady on freecycle.org who donated much of the fabric and ribbon to us.

If you have other ideas about making the surprise aspect of gift-giving green, please share them in our Discussion Forum.

-- Melinda

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