Furoshiki Fabric Views

General Goods

Furoshiki is a Japanese art of using fabric squares to wrap packages. It is both utilitarian and beautiful. I first discovered this craft when browsing Maureen Shaughnessy ’s blog. This approach to wrapping is regaining popularity in Japan as a way to reduce the waste produced by paper and plastic shopping bags.

Furoshiki is a Japanese cloth originally used to wrap and carry almost anything. Now furoshiki is used mostly to wrap gifts. If you make your furoshiki out of durable fabric like cotton, it will be machine washable and can be used over and over again. Using a furoshiki gift wrapping helps keep paper out of the landfills, making it not only a beautiful and useful craft, but earth-friendly, as well. Read on to learn how to do furoshiki.

This article in CRAFT calls Furoshiki “wrap thato’s as good as the gift. ” That pretty much says it all! Furoshiki is the Japanese tradition of wrapping things in fabric (a little history here). You can buy some pretty neat cloths made specifically for this purpose here, but of course you can always just use fabric from your stash. Or a special hankie, or a scarf. I love the thought of being able to use every part of a gift, no wadded up paper balls cluttering things up. I