Yesterday, I finally took a moment to get started on my Christmas shopping…I was barely in Chapters more than 2 steps when I started bemoaning the fact that I had no pen and no paper to write down all of the really cool ideas for creative Christmas gift ideas I was finding. (I really was alot like the proverbial ‘kid in the candy store’ – and this was only the first few minutes of the very first store of my shopping trip!!!)

There were so many really neat ideas out in the stores (as I grin in glee while I types) that I just had to come home and try out a few. (I didn’t end up getting much shopping done, but the ideas were fabulous!)

To start, I wanted to make felt gift bags. I liked the ones in the store (I really did) but my biggest problem was that they were all the same. I don’t know about you, but I like a little pizzazz in my gift wrapping – a little personality and personalization ( a little ‘me’) – and every one of the felt bags in the store I was in were all the same.

So, with a deep breathe, I turned on the computer and dove right in to making my own. I knew I wanted to add some pictures to my bags, so I downloaded some (copyright friendly) clipart images of ivy and tree decorations, and printed them off the size I thought I would need for the size of the bag I was going to make.

With that done, I grabbed the four most Christmas-y colours of felt I had on hand – bright red, bright green, white, and dark green.  I started with a pretty basic white square bag with no handles (simply fold over the top when it is all stuffed and tie with a ribbon or staple) and then got a little more adventurous with the shape of my bag – the next one  was a round bag with a strap much like a purse  – the bright green one in the first picture of this post (and when you are done using this gift wrapper, this cute little bag makes a cute ‘dress up’ purse for playtime). And then, in a stroke of mad creativity, I realized that I shouldn’t stop at just bags – gift card holders in felt would be amazing too!!! (picture to the left).

This whole project  seems so easy when I write it like that, eh? Well… maybe not so much. Don’t get me wrong, these bags are definitely easy to make – if you have a pattern and if you have some idea of what you are doing. You see, I had initially thought that this would be a great no-sew pattern. (I still think that it would, but even though my glue promised that it would glue felt, it didn’t. The glue held the felt cutouts to the front of the bag, but did not hold the bag together.)

Although this bag project is a fast 30 minute project, it took me 2 hours to figure out that my glue wasn’t working (but now that you know you have to be careful with the glue, this won’t happen to you).

I still think that if you don’t sew, you should still be able to glue this whole pattern together without sewing (if you have the right glue) or you can do a really basic  hand stitch  like I did on the card holder (if you can’t find glue that works).

So… if you want to get the pattern please email me (our new website will be up soon, but until then, I will be happy to send you the pattern by email. But – if you want a different pattern for the same project, check out Janome’s site