Quilted Gift Bags

I have been working on gift bags. My husband hates wrapping presents. (I'm the complete opposite - I love it.) So a few years back I decided to use some of that fabric I've got to make gift bags. The first ones were just bags - not even drawstring bags because that was too hard. Pretty ironic given how much time I spend on them now.

I didn't like just having one layer of fabric around the gifts - way too easy to figure out what was in the bag. So I've turned to making quilted gift bags. There's a tutorial here I wrote two years ago for anyone who is interested.

I love using up all the extra bits of batting that are too fiddly to whipstitch together to make a bigger batt. It's also fun to find the perfect fabric to just make bags out of as well, like this one:


The quilting on this one actually looks like the snowflakes I sewed this week:

I love buttons:

I put a perle cotton tie through every dot on this fabric:

I sew safety pins onto the back of the nametags so that I can move them from one bag to another. But this roller coaster bag is all mine. I sewed the ribbon on through all three layers of the sandwich.

Kind of ridiculous to spend this much time on bags. But I love that they are reusable and we're not throwing out all that wrapping paper. Plus it's cozy, like a little quilt snuggling up the gift.

I've had a hard time actually using these on presents leaving the house. I get too attached and just want to keep them here. I'm hoping the more I make the easier it will be to let some go. And it's not like they're going to "waste" here. I stuff things in them and use them to decorate. They look lovely under the tree and who actually needs presents?

By the way, I've posted pics of all of these bags before. I'll show the newer ones another day.

It was a crisp fall day today. Took a walk along the Champs d'Elysees with a friend. Hope the weather is lovely where ya'all are too.