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Join the Fun in this Town-Wide Project! Crafty Wellesley children and adults, sewers (novice to expert), or anyone looking for a fun and easy community project, Sustainable Wellesley is looking for your talent.

“We are creating beautiful, Japanese Furoshiki style cloths and reusable bags for a future, community gift wrapping event,” said Kelly Caiazzo, one of the organizers of the town-wide project. “Those who aren’t crafty can rummage through their closets and donate fabrics, bandanas, and scarves,” Caiazzo said.

Here are the details:

1. Donate Fabric: Flexible fabrics are ideal! Stiff fabrics are hard to tie furoshiki style. Fabric remnants measuring at least 20″ square work best- e-mail to make a fabric donation.

2. Sew Furoshiki Cloths: Cut a square piece of fabric a little larger than  your desired size. 20″ and 28″ are standard finished sizes, but in general any square that’s about 3x larger than the object being wrapped works well. Fold in each of the edges a quarter inch and iron; fold again and iron. Find instructions online for sewing mitered corners, follow and then sew around the perimeter of your prepared cloth in the middle of the fold. Flexible fabrics like thin cotton work best for tying. For instructions on hemming and three different corner options, click here. Please e-mail when you have completed some and Sustainable Wellesley will make plans to collect your cloths. Be sure to save wraps for yourself. To learn how to fold furoshiki gift wrap, click here.

3. Sew Bags: For a nice complement to Furoshiki (and one that doesn’t require any explanation for re-using!) the community will also be making Boomerang cloth bags. Check out the free pattern online here. Once you have created some for personal use, and some for the community, simply email Sustainable Wellesley to collect your the bags.

4. Email to organize or attend a sewing event. All are encouraged and welcome to join in this relaxing, community event where simple acts make a difference. Every year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used and discarded worldwide. Un-recycled bags plague the environment, greatly damaging the ocean as well as many other complex ecosystems. Since plastics take an average of 1,000 years to decompose, our waste isn’t going anywhere fast, so it’s up to us to help minimize our negative impact on the planet. Plus, the activity is relaxing, easy, and fun! Questions? E-mail.