Furoshiki: beautiful, reusable wrappings
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Wrappings for everything
Japanese traditional cloth wrappings called furoshiki, are the greenest package wrapping you can get. Reusable, beautiful, environmentally friendly wrapping for food, gifts, for anything at all.
I'll show you how to make a furoshiki style tote for show and tell.
Furoshiki means 'bath spread'
pronounced: f'-ROHSH-kee
Before that, a furoshiki was known as hirazutsumi — a flat folded bundle.
As time passed, the furoshiki was used by merchants to transport their wares, and by people to protect and decorate a gift.
These days the cloths are used to tie up any parcel or package you can imagine.
Even baby can be carried on one's back in a furoshiki!
Reusable (green) gift wraps
Furoshiki, friend to the environment
Image from Wikipedia
A Furoshiki is used for wrapping gifts
but it has lots of other uses, too
Furoshiki are commonly used to wrap and carry lunch boxes (bento) and then they are used as a table mat for the lunch.
In daily life in Japan, these cloths are often employed for other household uses, such as:
as a tablecloth
for decorating the wall
instead of a shopping bag
for storing objects
as a scarf
for wearing as a sun-dress
cut into patches for quilts
A tradition has been reinvigorated
no more plastic bags
Because of the threat plastic bags pose to wildlife and our ecology, people are again using furoshiki, and a tradition has been reinvigorated.
On March 6, 2006, the Japanese Minister of the Environment, Yuriko Koike, created a furoshiki cloth to promote its use in the modern world.
Traditional furoshiki back in style
green wrappings
- Japan Minister of Environment
In Focus: How to use "Furoshiki" [MOE]
Ms Yuriko Koike, Minister of the Environment, (pictured) has created the "Mottainai Furoshiki" as a symbol of Japanese culture to reduce waste.
What are these cloths made of?
What size are they?
While there is no one set size, most furoshiki are around 18 to 20 inches square, have a printed design in one corner, and are hemmed at the edges.
When you wrap a parcel or a gift in paper, the wrapping is often very creased and not easy to reuse. A furoshiki can be part of the present, and so can be used over and over. (Very green!)
A furoshiki exhibition
Preventing garbage with traditional wrapping
- PingMag - online design magazine based in Tokyo
'Thanks, I don't need a bag!" How many times a day do I have to repeat this sentence? When buying drinks at a convenience store, apples at a supermarket or a pack of gum in all sorts of occasions we are given plastic bags which we only use for very short moments.
Learn how to fold furoshiki
Buy this book on Amazon
Furoshiki Wrapping
Amazon Price: $28.00 (as of 05/31/2012)
List Price:
This book is featured on Furoshiki [dot] com
Buy firoshiki on Amazon
How to fold diagrams
of traditional Japanese wrapping cloth
- Furoshiki [dot] com
furoshiki is a traditional japanese wrapping cloth, use it to wrap everything. Furoshiki can be used for gift wrapping, grocey shopping or even as clothing
Uses for furoshiki
on infomapJAPAN
- infomapJAPAN Furoshiki
Introduction of Furoshiki, its history, culture, etiquette and how to use
Furoshki style tote
make one, or two!
I have a smaller one for taking to the supermarket. (good green!)
Here's how it's made.
I have coloured the three layers in different colours so you can see what's to happen. Of course, you will get a really pretty bag if you use three bandannas, or three different batik fabrics...
1. Start with a length of fabric
3 times as long as it is wide.
Hem all the way around — unless you want to make a separate lining.
Fold in an S — three equal divisions.
2. Sew yellow to brown
right sides together
3. Turn out, round, sew brown to blue
On the opposite edge of the brown layer (right sides together, again)
4. Turn the bag out
Pat it flat
5. Tie a knot in the handles
Done!
Both utilitarian and beautiful
furoshiki on Layers of Meaning blog
- Layers of Meaning
Furoshiki is a Japanese art of using fabric squares to wrap packages.
Other cloth wrap lenses on Squidoo
Jan T
furoshiki fan
Drop me a line
about furoshiki, or anything else you want to say...
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Tipi
Jan 4, 2011 @ 10:44 am | delete
- What a wonderful idea for a lens and such a lovely alternative to waste!
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SereneSea Nov 9, 2010 @ 4:06 am | delete
- Very artistic and eco-friendly too. Japanese art is synonymous to aesthetics. This reminds me of Bonsai and Ikebana.
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KarenTBTEN
Oct 14, 2010 @ 12:14 pm | delete
- Wow. I knew a person could wrap in fabric, but not that it could be such an art. SquidAngel blessings.
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MeltedRachel
Jun 11, 2010 @ 5:45 am | delete
- So glad I found this lens! I love the idea of using cloth to wrap gifts. I featured this lens on a lens I recently made of ideas of how to make different types of wrapping fabrics. Hope you don't mind.
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JanTUB
Jul 4, 2010 @ 9:52 am | delete
- I'm glad you like it!
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by JanTUB
I have been quilting for more than a quarter of a century. (Sounds much longer than 25 years.) That's me in my studio in 2006.
Quilt tutor, patchwork...
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