If you celebrate Christmas, you are probably in the throes of gift-wrapping as we speak. It can get pretty tedious wrapping gift after gift in the traditional way (at least what *I* have always thought was the traditional way!) So this year, give these Japanese techniques a shot: envelope-style or the slightly more complicated-looking diagonal wrapping.
Better yet, use fabric to wrap your gifts to reduce waste (I always get slightly nauseated on Christmas morning watching all that gift wrap getting wadded up and tossed in the trash). The Japanese government even promotes the practice and offers this PDF chart detailing how to wrap a number of differently-shaped objects with fabric. (via Make)
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the link to the wrappings! What a brilliant idea! I had to print the page so that I can use if for holiday gifts and everyday life.
Awesome information, and just in time since I’ve got a few gifts left to wrap. Thank you!
fantastic links. thanks a lot. i always save the paper of my presents, but don’t know where to keep them. would like to get fabric wrapped gifts for my sewing stock.
love this information! thanks!
I loved this link. I rushed right out to buy 12 yards of fabric which we used to wrap all our family gifts. My dh wrapped most of the gifts, and not following the suggested guidelines, cut the pieces as if they were paper, ie: too small for furoshiki. I was able to salvage enough fabric to wrap my gifts using the furoshiki techniques and loved how they looked. After all the debris from Christmas was cleared, I gathered the scraps of small fabric and sewed them together, crazy quilt style. I made ten new large squares with only a little bit left over. thanks for the great tip!
As a half japanese person and someone who has been to Japan, I am a big fan of Japanese style wrapping. When my mother went to buy a gift/food set for a funeral memorial service (they have a ceremony to commemorate someone’s death for a certain number of years afterwards) they wrapped it the opposite way around. Apparently there are loads of rules about how to wrap things depending on the occasion. There’s more protocol to Japanese wrapping than the British Royal family.
The fabric wrappings are traditionally used to wrap gifts that you bring to someone when you visit them (the Japanese are very into giving gifts every time you see a friend or relative you don’t see often). Then the person who you gave the gift to would return the fabric later (when they unwrapped the gift) to you for using again. The fabric wrappings are quite an old-fashioned tradition and are, for the most part, out dated in Japan. However, I imagine they are making a come-back for environmental reasons.
Furthermore, for the westerners who can’t sacrifice giving a lovely piece of cloth away to someone who doesn’t understand Japanese tradition and won’t give you your fabric back; I suggest using an old shoe-box painted up and tied with old ribbon or string.
Hi ! the link has changed.
Does any one have a print-out that you could send to me? aerodi@yahoo.com Thanks
Links have changed.
Could anyone e-mail me a copy of the print-outs?
Thanks.
davies.cm@gmail.com
Hi! I have been trying to get the page on diagonal gift wrapping but page has changed. Is it possible to get a print on my e-mail? Thanks so much…..Claire
The link has changed,
could someone email me a print out?
thanks heaps
y_jtan@yahoo.com
I found the pages from the company, SHIMOJIMA. The company must have simply restructured their website.
The more detailed Japanese site: http://www.shimojima.co.jp/wrapping/clip/index.html
The English site: http://www.shimojima.co.jp/eng/wrapping/index.html
Thanks for the post! Unfortunately, I tried the link to ‘diagonal wrapping’ but it’s broken. Any idea how to get to that page? It would be so useful!
This is an old post and the link has changed
Oh, oops, I just saw this in the comments… sorry! :)