#I have one like crochet shawl/thing I started with leftover yarn but I ran out and just. Put the thing aside because I wasn't in the mood..

[moongothic]

I do enjoy wrapping Christmas presents in theory, but just thinking about what a waste of paper that is (if you're not using like, old newspapers as wrapping paper) kinda kills me inside, because I have Stupid Hangups about Minor Things

So, using some old fabric scraps I put together two extremely janky reusable giftbags for the Crimbus Season, wheee

I guess these are technically reversible bags, but yes the red-and-green striped side is meant to be the outside.

I just had some red fabric scraps from some ancient sewing project I can't even remember anymore, while the green scraps where leftovers from when I recently reclaimed one of my dad's old shirts, one he had NEVER worn (and did not want), to make a basic pillowcase/covering for a bolster pillow (one my mom had previously made a hideous and unpleasant-to-touch crochet covering for, which was also filthy and could not be removed to be washed without being cut into. Yeah I did not feel bad getting rid of that covering, but I needed a replacement, and the old, fresh shirt was gonna do just fine)

Both are knit fabrics, which, y'know. Absolutely not ideal for this kinda project. Main issue I had to deal with while making these bags is that I don't really have anything I could use to temporarily draw on these softer fabrics (y'know to give myself guidelines when cutting and sewing). Like just trying to draw on them would make the fabric stretch in objection without leaving any marks on the fabric. So although my goal was to make nice even stripes, actually cutting the fabric pieces and then pinning them down evenly wasn't actually do-able. I did my best to measure the stripes out but yeah they're a bit wonky and janky and uneven. Fortunately I did not have that problem with the rest of the fabrics I used for these bags. If I hadn't made the outside patchwork then I obviously wouldn't have bothered with lining them, but it was the only way to really clean-up the insides of the bags. And, as a bonus, the lining also added more structure to the stretchy ass knit fabrics, which is super nice.

I didn't really have many big fabric pieces laying around I could us for this project, definitely not in colors I would've liked to use (like I had some bright yellow but... I don't think that really fits the Crimbus-y vibes), so for the first and the bigger bag I used some very stiff but thin cotton (possibly the very type of cotton you'd reccomend to use with patchworking??) with a widdle floral pattern on it, while the other was a much thicker cotton plain black fabric (like I'd use this one to upholster a stool or something it's so thick and stronk). And for the top of both bags I used some natural white woven cotton/linen (it's from my mom's stash, I don't know what it is), quite strong and fairly thick. IDK I'm happy I was able to use up some of these scrap fabrics I already have instead of letting them sit around collecting dust.

Last but not least, I grabbed some cord locks/toggles from my mom's stash to make them into drawstring bags, and for the cord/rope/whatever... I don't really have anything fitting for this kind of project already in stash, but I have a bunch of unused, ancient shoelaces. And y'know what. I'm not gonna use those lightbrown shoelaces for anything else. By the time my current pair of shoes needs to have its shoelaces replaced, the shoes will need to be replaced too, and I'm gonna get free shoelaces with the new shoes if/when that happens. I might as well use these spare shoelaces here. Why the fuck not.

But yeah, just a little project. Again, the bags are turbo janky, but they don't have to be fancy, they just need to hold Crimbus gifts once a year before I yeet them into storage until next year.