Making a furoshiki wrapping cloth

My completed furoshiki-wrapped test gift!

I used to think wrapping paper was a necessary evil. Then I stumbled across an old craft book at the library featuring a pattern for a quilted Christmas "furoshiki" or Japanese wrapping cloth. After this year's horrible experience with wrapping gifts for the new extended family I thought this furo-whatever thing may warrant a closer investigation.

My holiday wrapping nightmare: after spending more than $25 on what I thought were 2 rolls of quality giftwrap from Target, I spent an entire evening wrapping presents. That's several hours of my life wrapping presents and I don't even have children yet. The wrapping paper was so thin it kept ripping at the seams. And after the Christmas gift exchange was over, there were 2 large garbage bags full of waste. It just didn't seem right.

It turns out a furoshiki is simply a large square of cotton or synthetic fabric used to wrap a gift or carry an object - no quilting or double-siding necessary (whew). In fact, it's a whole system over a thousand years old, with many traditional ways to tie and wrap odd sized objects. Perfect! Not only is it the ultimate form of re-usable, economic gift wrap, but you can quickly follow instructions to attractively wrap any object. No more fumbling with tape, scissors and weird shaped gifts.

Mitered corners.

The four key considerations to sewing your wrapping cloth are size, fabric weight, design and seam method. A beveled or mitered corner looks best, here is the a great tutorial that I followed. I picked up two lightweight cotton prints at the thrift store to try. The first furoshiki came out too small (about 15 inches by 15 inches) and the largest things I can wrap are small rectangular objects. And the knots are too tiny.

I tried the book-carry wrap, it's super fast and looks very cheerful with the bright print. My only suggestion would be to reinforce the corners as they absorb most of the stress of the knots. I can see them stretching and twisting already.

I'll update when I complete some larger ones and some Christmas ones! I'm also wondering what would happen if they were made in a diamond shape instead of a square?