A first-ever for The Frugal Girl: a giveaway of my own

I know I’m supposed to be posting about baking today, but I’ve got nothin’ for ya! I plan to bake a little something to share with you tomorrow, though, so we’re just flip-flopping Wednesday’s and Thursday’s posts. 😉

Two years ago when I posted about how to make cloth gift bags, Katy of The NonConsumer Advocate suggested that I do a cloth bag giveaway, and while I thought that was a great idea, I never really around to it.

Well, until now.

This week I made a small red velvet gift bag specifically for one of you!

To make it, I used the last of the fabric from this jumper that was given to me as a hand-me-down when I was a teenager.

(Yes, I totally wore it. In fact, it was one of Mr. FG’s favorites, and I wore it for our engagement pictures, which I would share with you if they were digital. So you’ll just have to imagine me with puffy bangs in a velvet jumper. Or not. That might be disturbing.)

Anyways, this jumper has definitely done its time as a jumper and is serving us much better as a pile of gift bags!

I’m not a professional seamstress by any stretch of the imagination, but I think this bag will serve you well. The top edges are finished neatly so that they’ll look beautiful when you tie the bag shut, and the inside edges are zig-zagged so that the fabric won’t fray.

I’m including a silver ribbon that I salvaged from an Ann Taylor bag (Worry not…I wasn’t actually shopping at Ann Taylor. The bag was filled with hand-me-downs. 😉 ).

So, every part of this gift bag is repurposed except for the thread that I used.

I made this bag from the bodice pieces (it’s all that was left of the jumper!), so it’s about 9.5x 8.5 inches, which is perfect for small gifts.

If you’d like to enter to win this bag, just leave a comment. I’ll randomly choose a winner 48 hours from now, at 7:00 AM, EST on Friday. I’ll contact the winner by email to obtain a mailing address and if I don’t hear back from the winner within 48 hours, I’ll choose a new recipient.

Because I’m paying the shipping costs for this, I’ll have to be a meanie and say that it’s open only to readers who live in the 48 contiguous United States (edit: WilliamB pointed out that shipping to APO and FPO boxes costs the same as domestic shipping does, so if you’ve got one of those addresses, enter away!).

If you live outside the U.S., though, don’t lose heart. Cloth gift bags are super easy to make, so if you’ve got very basic sewing skills, you can whip up a bag by following my tutorial.

See you tomorrow for some baking!

Today’s 365 post: 3/$0.99