Homemade Gift Bags

With James' birthday just around the corner and in an effort to go a little more green, save money, and feed my creating needs, I whipped up a bunch of homemade drawstring gift bags using this tutorial.

love the pattern on this fabric!

Not only are these cheaper to make than the cost of the paper gift bags you can buy at the store, they are also prettier, very eco-friendly and, of course, made with lots of love. Oh and they'll last forever, too!

Greens and blues - my favorite colors.

Hard to see in the photo, but these are pinstriped. The tall one is holding a bottle of wine.

A large bag with a sweet farm pattern to hold James' wooden farm animals.

I feel fortunate to have found such nice fabric down here. With only one fabric store on the island, it's slim pickin's to say the least. Some of it I bought half off during an after Christmas sale. The yarn was a bit of a splurge though - I bought organic cotton (sooo soft) and some wool because it's so much nicer to work with (I fingerknitted the yarn into drawstrings).

I made a few of these little bags for James' Easter basket.

So... what do you think? You should make some too! Honestly, they take such little time to put together and you only need to have very basic sewing skills. I hand stitched all of these, though a sewing machine would make the process even faster (if that's your goal).